


Fairytale: A Pevensie Sisters Story

by LucyCrewe11 (Raphaela_Crowley)



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fae & Fairies, Family Feels, Fantasy, Gen, Inspired by Fairytale: A True Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26999122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphaela_Crowley/pseuds/LucyCrewe11
Summary: After Peter goes missing saving Edmund during a terrible train wreck, there is little joy in the Pevensie household until the fateful day when Lucy and Susan discover fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Kudos: 9





	1. Susan and Lucy see the fairies

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008.
> 
> This story takes place right after "The lion the witch and the wardrobe" but some of the events that happen later are still in this story. For example, Susan meets the Nerdy boy at the train station before going to the professor's house instead of at the subway before going to Narnia for a second time. In this story, they've only been to Narnia once. And The train crash from the last battle happened sooner. Only the Pevensies don't die in it.
> 
> The Pevensies ages in this fic:
> 
> Peter: 16
> 
> Susan: about 14 or 15
> 
> Edmund: Around 10 or 11, no older than 12
> 
> Lucy: 9

"Lucy!" A familiar voice echoed through the little valley at the bottom of the garden where Lucy often went to play.

It was Marjorie Preston, one of Lucy's best friends. She was running down the slippery green slope to meet her, waving her arms franticly to get her attention.

Lucy was sitting on a checkered table-cloth sort of blanket that she had spread out below herself to keep from getting her stockings damp. She wouldn't have bothered with such a petty endeavor, not really being the sort of girl who worried about keeping her clothing at its best, but her Mother had often scolded her and warned her that she would "be sure to fall ill" if she didn't take care.

Now she stood up and waved back to her friend. "Marjorie!" She called back happily as her friend came closer.

The two girls met in a tight embrace. "Oh, Lucy, I have missed you terribly!"

"How was school?" Lucy asked, as she motioned for her friend to sit down with her on the blanket.

Marjorie shrugged. "Not terrible. I can't wait until your mum sends you next year. I do wish I wasn't a whole year and a half older than you. It would have been much more fun going to St. Finbars for the first time with you. I was terrified going by myself. I fairly wept when I had to say goodbye to my mum and get on the train. I know you would have been braver and I tried very hard to be like you, but that didn't work out so well."

"Surely Susan was of some comfort to you." Lucy said cheerfully, thinking of her older sister.

Marjorie shook her head. "Not really." She paused noticing the surprised look on her friend's face. "I mean, I hardly saw her. She's so much older than I am and was with the bigger girls all the time. But she didn't ignore me the way the others did. She did say hello if we happened to pass by one another."

"I'm glad to hear that." Lucy said.

"By the way, when does Susan get back?" Marjorie asked her.

The first-year girls classes closed shortly before that of the older girls so Susan had yet to arrive back home.

"She's coming back tomorrow afternoon." Lucy explained. "Dad, Edmund, and I are going to meet her at the station."

"You still haven't heard anything about..." Marjorie started to say softly.

Lucy felt tears prick her eyes and gently wiped them away with the side of her sweater sleeve. "No, nothing."

"I'm sorry." Marjorie told her.

Peter had been missing for nearly three months now.

Some time ago, there had been a railway accident. Both Peter and Edmund had been waiting for a friend of the Professor's to arrive. A lady called, Polly Plummer who was traveling by herself and needed a place to spend the night. Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had gladly agreed to let her stay with them out of gratitude for all the Professor had done for their children during the war. No one knew exactly what went wrong. All they knew had come from Edmund who had been very shaken up when he'd woken up in a hospital bed to see the tear-filled eyes of his two sisters and his parents.

He had been shocked to see all nothing but a sharp bright white all around him. Then he heard Susan's voice.

"Mum, Dad, Lu!" She cried. "Look! He's waking up."

"Susan?" Edmund managed to murmur. "Where am I?"

He tried to sit up but felt a burning pain in one of his arms that focused him to slump back down.

"Careful, Ed." Mr. Pevensie warned him. "Your arm is broken, and you must keep it as still as possible."

"Edmund!" Lucy hugged him from the other side of his body, the one without a broken limb. "I was so worried."

"How long have I been asleep?" Edmund asked, figuring out now, though no one actually told him, that he was in the hospital.

"A couple of days." Mrs. Pevensie told him.

"What happened?" Edmund looked into the frightened faces of his family for an explanation.

"Don't you remember?" Susan said, leaning closer to him now. "The accident at the station?"

Edmund closed his eyes and thought hard, searching his memory.

-A train moving very fast...a look of sheer horror on Peter's face...he says words slowly and softly, Edmund can't hear them over the sound of screeching metal and terrified screams of passengers. But he reads his lips, "by the Lion!"

The train about to hit them..."Edmund, look out!" Peter reaches over...shoving him out of harms way The force of the shove knocks Edmund to the ground, he lands on his arm and hears a faint crunching sound before his head hits the concrete and he blacks out-

"Peter..." Edmund said, now that all his memory was returning. "Where is he?"

Mrs. Pevensie and Lucy start to cry. Susan gulps and Mr. Pevensie hangs his head.

"He didn't...die...did he?" Edmund asked bravely, although the thought that his brother might be dead hurt far more than his broken arm ever could.

"We don't know." Susan whispered gravely. "We found you lying on the floor of the station but...we never found Peter...we don't know if he lived or..." Susan's voice started to become faint and a few tears slid down her cheeks.

"There's still hope." Mr. Pevensie said, trying to keep them all from despair. "He might be alright."

Now three months later, Lucy was sitting with Marjorie in the garden by the little stream looking at the rushing water thinking about her brother.

"Are you going to have a memorial service for him?" Marjorie wanted to know.

Lucy's eyes darkened. "Of course not." she snapped. "He'd have to be dead for that."

"I know...but..." Marjorie fumbled for the right words to say.

"He is alive, Marjorie." Lucy insisted firmly, looking her friend right in the eye. "Peter's alive and he's coming home."

Marjorie decided to change the subject. "This is a nice little garden." She looked around at all the lush green surrounding them. "It's nice that Mrs. Esmara let's you use it."

Mrs. Esmara, was a very old lady (Nearly a hundred years old, some said) who owned the garden that the Pevensies often played in. It wasn't out of some great love towards Pevensies that she did so. It was simply because she believed that being kind to children made people say nice things about you after you'd died and there was nothing she wanted more than that.

"I suppose it is nice of her." Lucy had never thought of if the lady had meant to be kind or not. She'd been coming down to the garden so often with her siblings growing up that in the back of her mind, she'd come to believe that it was more theirs even though everyone called it, 'Mrs. Esmara's garden'.

Marjorie noticed the box Lucy had next to her on the blanket. "What's in there?" she asked, curiously.

Lucy opened the lid and pulled out two chairs made of sticks and moss.

"Fairy chairs!" Marjorie clapped her hands. "Did you make them?"

"Yes." Lucy admitted, taking them out. "I made them as a surprise for you."

Marjorie had a secret love of fairies that only Lucy knew about. Neither girl had ever seen a fairy (Even in Narnia Lucy had never come across any of them) but both believed in them. The only difference was that Lucy would readily tell anyone who asked that she believed in fairies. Marjorie on the other hand would turn very red in the face and mumble, "I don't know."

As of late, Lucy had taken to making little fairy-sized things and giving them to Marjorie as gifts. Marjorie kept them in a metal trunk in her bedroom, safe from the eyes of anyone who would mock them or tell anyone about their existence.

"Do you think Susan likes traveling by herself?" Marjorie asked, running her fingers along the side of one of the fairy chairs.

"She's not by herself." Lucy said. "Some of her school friends must be with her at least part of the way."

Susan sat on the train looking out the window. She was on her way home again. It was the first time she'd been home since Peter's disappearance.

"Phyllis?"

Oh no. Susan rolled her eyes and moaned. It was that boy again.

'That boy' had met her at the train station the day She and her siblings left for the professor's house to escape the air raids. She'd snubbed him and given herself a face name. Aka, 'Phyllis'. And hadn't seen or thought of him since. And now, here he was...great, just great.

"Can I sit here?" The boy asked glancing at the seat next to her.

No. Susan thought wishing he'd go away. But she didn't say anything out loud she just nodded, took her notebooks off the seat, and turned her body away so she could look out the window and hopefully avoid actually having to talk to 'That boy'.

It wasn't that there was anything wrong with him per say. He wasn't horrible looking and he had a friendly demeanor but Susan simply wasn't interested in him. Not to be friends and certainly, not to be anything else.

"Your name isn't really Phyllis is it?" The boy asked.

Busted! Susan turned to look at him, feeling a little guilty. "No." she confessed. "It's Susan, Susan Pevensie."

"Ah." He smiled at her, not seeming at all offended that she's lied to him about her name. "I'm Charles, Charles Finbar."

"Wait, did you say Finbar?" Susan asked, surprised that his last name was the same as her school's name.

"Yes..." Charles laughed a little. "That's how I knew you weren't really called Phyllis. St. Finbar was my great uncle, my father had the lists of students and the only 'Phyllis' enrolled was nine."

"Sorry, I lied...I just..." Susan tried to apologize.

Charles smiled again. "That's alright. I'm actually flattered."

"Flattered?" Susan asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

"Flattered that you took the time to actually make up a fake name instead of telling me to get lost." Charles laughed. "You're the first girl I've ever talked to who's taken the time to do that, it's progress!"

Susan giggled a little at that. "I suppose you'll want to celebrate." She joked.

"Yes, tell everyone I know." Charles went on. "and buy cake."

"Build a statue many stories high." Susan added dryly.

"Out of the cake!" Charles joked.

Susan felt a little nicer towards him now. He was really funny and obviously didn't hold grudges. Maybe she hadn't given him a fair chance before.

"Maybe you know my brother." Susan said a while later when they'd been talking about people they knew at school. "His name's Edmund."

"Edmund Pevensie?" Charles thought it over. "He's in the younger class...right?"

"That's right." Susan said. "I have another brother, Peter, he's about your age, you might have met him...only...you couldn't have." Susan hung her head a little thinking of her older brother whom she missed so deeply.

"Why not?" He asked.

"He's missing." Susan explained as the train came to a stop. She gathered her things. "This is my stop." She turned around and looked back at him before she left. "It was nice talking with you."

"You too." Charles was pretty much beaming. She'd actually talked to him!

Outside the station, Susan looked around for signs of her family.

She noticed a small girl with golden curls running towards her. "Susan!" She called out.

"Hey, Lu!" Susan gave her little sister a tight hug.

"Welcome home, Su." Edmund was standing being her.

"How's the arm?" Susan asked noticing that Edmund still didn't move it properly.

"It's not so bad, honest it's not." Edmund assured her. "it's just a little sore that's all."

"Great to have you back." Mrs. Pevensie gave her daughter a hug before Mr. Pevensie cut in and did the same.

"Hi, dad." Susan said.

"Welcome home, dear."

Two days later, Susan and Lucy sat in the garden. Lucy looked around, took off her shoes and put her feet in the water.

"Lucy!" Susan scolded. "Don't do that."

"Why not?" Lucy asked. "The water's clean."

"I guess so but..." Susan said looking unsure.

"It's almost as clean as the Narnian waters." Lucy commented.

"Lu," Susan said softly. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Yes." Lucy said noticing the pained look on her sister's face.

"I don't believe in Aslan anymore." Susan confessed unable to look her sister in the eye as she said this.

"Oh, Su!" Lucy gasped, pulling one foot out of the water as she spoke. "You can't mean it."

"Why did he send us back here?" Susan asked softly. "To forget...every day I wake up and Narnia seems more like a dream...I don't want to forget...but it's so hard to...remember. I just wish we had a picture of Narnia...I can't keep it in my mind...I forget..."

"We'll go back someday." Lucy told her. "I just know it, somehow."

"With out Peter?" Susan shook her head. "If we'd never left Narnia, he'd be with us now..."

"He's alive, Susan." Lucy reached for her sister's hand and squeezed it tightly. "Don't you believe that?"

"Sometimes I do." Susan said, tears started to run down her face. "Other times, I think we're never going to see our brother again, that he's gone forever...that's when I think Aslan doesn't love us."

"That's not true." Lucy assured her. "Aslan does love us. It's not like he could just come roaring in and stop the train. This isn't Narnia."

"It's not just Aslan or Narnia, Lu." Susan sighed. "I don't think I believe in anything anymore. I feel so numb all the time. I wish I had your faith."

"What's that?" Lucy saw something moving across the stream at dark green bush. A light being no bigger than a grown-ups thumb with clear glossy wings flew out of the bush and hovered in the air for a moment. It was a fairy.

"What's what?" Susan followed Lucy's gaze and her eyes landed on the bush a second or so after the fairy had left it.

"Susan did you see it?" Lucy gasped breathlessly. "It was a fairy."

"A fairy?" Susan laughed. "Lucy, don't be silly."

"I'm not being silly, Susan, there really is a...look there's more!" Lucy pointed to another bush where three fairies very much like the one she just seen were hovering.

This time Susan saw them. Her eyes widened. "Oh my..."


	2. Photographing Fairies

"I can't believe we really saw fairies!" Lucy said cheerfully as she and Susan walked up and out of the garden, heading home. "I've always known they were real. I mean, if dyads are real...so of course fairies would be too..."

Susan was quiet, content to let her little sister do all the talking. The fairies really had been something. Such beauty. Teeny bodies like dragon flies and translucent wings the color of the Narnian sky right before a rain storm. How she missed that sky.

Next to one of the trees on the outskirts of the garden, Lucy noticed a circle of brightly colored mushrooms.

"Oh, Susan!" Lucy gasped pointing to the circle, "It's a fairy ring. That's where they go to dance."

"They don't dance here anymore, Lucy." Susan said, her voice nearly a whisper.

"What do you mean?" Lucy wrinkled her forehead in confusion. "This is their ring, don't they have to use it?"

"They went away when we made him stop believing." Susan said, sounding like she was holding back tears.

"Who?" Lucy asked. "Made who stop believing?"

Susan shook her head and didn't answer. "Come on, we'd best be getting home now."

She would have pressed the issue but Susan reached out her hand to grab her's and said, "The sooner we get home, the sooner you can tell Edmund what we saw."

Lucy gave in and allowed her hand to be taken and led away.

"Edmund!" Lucy cried breathlessly, letting go of Susan's hand and running passed her to get to Edmund, who'd met them at the front door. "You won't believe what we saw down in the garden."

Lucy's face was beaming and her eyes shone brightly. Edmund hadn't seen her look this happy in a long time. Not since Peter went missing.

"What did you see?" He asked her.

"Fairies!" Lucy told him excitedly, waving her arms as she spoke. "And Susan saw them too!"

"What were they like, Su?" Edmund wanted to see excitement on his older Sister's face as well although he knew better than to expect it. Fairies or no fairies.

"Pretty." Susan said simply. "Why don't you have Lucy tell you all about them?"

"I want to hear it from you too." Edmund tried.

Susan shook her head. "I'm really tired, Ed." She went into the house. "Maybe later."

Over the next few days, Lucy and Susan returned to the bottom of the garden again and again. Each time visited by the fairies. After a while they came to be on reasonably personal terms with them.

They learned that the one in the long white gown made of spider's silk who wore a cap of silver upon her head of dark-as-night hair, was the Queen. The bulky bearded ones who seemed to be missing wings, weren't fairies at all but gnomes who were sort of servants to the fairies. The pale one in pink who cared a golden leaf around with her was much more shy than the others and was more prone to run away if one of the girls made a sudden movement.

Susan-because she was the quiet still one of the two-was able to coax the shy fairy to sit in the palm of her hand and eat some cake crumbs. (Fairies are known for loving cake) The others took a larger liking to Lucy because the pasty crumbs she had in her pockets were slightly bigger than the dainty carefully chosen ones Susan offered them.

If the fairies spoke, it wasn't in front of the Pevensie girls. They never said a word though their emotions were never hard to guess. Lucy and Susan took to naming each of them, hoping they were at least close to whatever their real names might be.

The shy one, Susan called Rosie. Lucy named three of the gnomes, Toad, Mick, and Jeo. The queen was the hardest to come up with a good name for because every name they could think of didn't suit her. This name wasn't pretty enough for her. That name was pretty enough but too simple for a fairy queen. Or else the name wasn't grand enough.

"Do you suppose it would be rude to just call her Queen?" Lucy asked one day, as she threw cake crumbs to a fairy child that was hovering close by her blanket-spot.

"Yes it would be." Susan said. "I know when we were queens, I wouldn't have liked to just be called 'Queen'."

Lucy smiled a little as this was one of Susan's rare mentions of Narnia and then added, "But what do we call her then?"

"For now, we could just call her, your majesty." Susan suggested logically.

Late that night, Lucy woke up with a very dry throat. She stepped out of bed, pulled her dressing gown around her, and walked to the kitchen. She got herself a glass of water and gulped it all in one sip. "Ah."

Nearby, someone was shuffling papers and breathing heavily as if they had been crying. Lucy wondered if it was one of her parents. She tip-toed over to the dinning room. Edmund was sitting at table with a dim lamp as his only light looking at an old photo album.

"Edmund?" Lucy said softly.

He jumped before he realized it was only his little sister. "Oh, Hullo. What are you doing up?"

"Getting a drink of water." Lucy explained. She leaned over and looked at the photo the album was open to. (All the photos were of course black and white because of the time period). There were actually two photographs on the page. One of the whole family standing together and one with just Peter by himself. He stood next to the side of the house and had apparently been laughing at something right before the photo was taken because his cheeks looked flushed

"You miss him too." Lucy said, taking a chair and sitting beside her brother.

"Of course I do." Edmund said, closing the album. "I can't believe we'll never see him again."

"He's fine, Edmund." Lucy insisted. "And he's coming home."

"Then why isn't he here?" Edmund said hopelessly. "It's going on four months now, Lucy, and nothing..."

"Edmund, don't..." Lucy shook her head refusing to even consider that he wasn't alive somewhere.

"I know what missing means." Edmund mumbled, trying to hold back tears.

Lucy didn't understand. "What are you talking about?"

"I know what Mum and dad mean when they said he's missing." Edmund said in a shaky tone that clearly implied that he believed Peter was never coming back.

"It means they don't know where he is." Lucy said, reaching out for her brother's trembling hand. "That's all it means."

"Did you play with the fairies again today?" Edmund asked, changing the subject.

"Yes." Lucy told him. "They came right to us this time."

"I wonder if..." Edmund pondered.

"Wonder what?" Lucy wanted to know.

"I heard Mum and dad say that when he was little, Peter claimed to play with fairies in the garden too." Edmund told her. "They think it was a story he made up for fun. But I was thinking..."

"...if they were the same ones Susan and I know?" Lucy finished. Suddenly, she had an idea. "Good night." She said going back up stairs, but not to her own room.

A while later, Susan came downstairs looking for Lucy when she realized she wasn't in the room that they shared. (Only Edmund and Peter had their own rooms). "Oh, Edmund, have you seen Lucy?"

"She was here about half an hour ago." Edmund said.

"She didn't go outside did she?" Susan worried.

"No." Edmund said wearily. "She went back upstairs."

"Alright then." Susan noticed how tired her brother looked. "Go back to bed Edmund."

"Don't tell me what to do." Edmund grumped. "Go to bed yourself."

Susan sighed, she was used to Edmund's mood swings. The only one he never lashed out at no matter how badly he was feeling, was Lucy because she had been Peter's favorite. Edmund felt guilty thinking it was his fault that Peter was lost and tried to do things Peter would've wanted him to do. Including being kind to Lucy at all times.

Passing Peter's room, Susan saw a light on. The door was open a crack. She took a couple of steps into the room. "Lucy!" she hissed. "What are you doing in there?"

Lucy was sitting at Peter's desk looking at some papers she had pulled out of one of the draws. "Hush." Lucy whispered back, not unkindly.

Susan came into the room and closed the door behind her. "You shouldn't be in here, if Mum finds out..."

Mrs. Pevensie had wanted to keep Peter's room exactly the way it was when he had last left it. No one was allowed in there. But that wasn't going to stop Lucy from finding out what she needed to know.

"Susan..." Lucy whispered holding up one of the papers. "Look at this..."

It was a drawing of a fairy who looked just like the one Susan had befriended, the one with the golden leaf. It was very well drawn (Susan and Peter were the artists in the family, everything Edmund and Lucy drew looked like stick figures) there was no denying what it was supposed to be.

Susan's eyes widened and she took the drawing from Lucy to get a better look at it. "It's her."

"There's more of them." Lucy looked down at all the papers she'd spread out on the desk. "Some of them are our fairies...the others I don't know who they are." Lucy moved one out of the way, so she could get a better look at the one under it. "He believed didn't he?"

"Yes." Susan said. "Mum and dad told him he was getting too old to tell fairy stories though...and I..."

"I hope you told him he ought to believe in them all the same." Lucy said, her voice suddenly stern.

Susan shook her head. "I was horrible." she confessed. "I didn't believe him anymore than mum or dad did. When we were small and he talked freely about them, I teased him worse than Edmund used to tease you about the woods in the back of the wardrobe."

"Oh, Su, you didn't!" Lucy couldn't imagine her kind, gentle older sister behaving like that.

"I think that's why he never showed these to me." Susan said. "But I didn't always mock him, only sometimes when it seemed he'd never get over his pretend fairies."

"But they weren't pretend." Lucy said.

"I know that now." Susan sighed. "I wish I could tell him I'm sorry."

"You can tell him that when he comes home." Lucy shrugged.

"What if he doesn't?" Susan asked, feeling horrible putting doubts in her little sister's head, but not being able to stop herself.

"He will." Lucy said. "He has to." She picked up one drawing that was clearly of the fairy queen. "Peter really captured what she looked like here."

"Yes, he did." Susan admitted thinking it was almost a perfect likeness to the real fairy.

"I wish they could see them." Lucy whispered.

"Who?" Susan asked.

"Mum and dad." Lucy told her. "I think they need fairies more than we do."

"Grown-ups don't need fairies." Susan explained in a very matter-a-fact tone of voice. "They have other forms of comfort, I'm sure."

"Maybe they don't." Lucy said. "I've seen Mum cry much harder than we ever do."

"Hmm..." A plan ran though Susan's head.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucy asked.

"Oh, nothing." Susan answered, holding back a smile. She'd put the finishing touches on her plans as she dozed off to sleep and tell them to Lucy in the morning.

The next day, Susan asked Lucy to get their father's camera and meet her in the garden.

Lucy meant to ask for help with it first but their father left and went to his job before she had a chance to do so.

"Oh well." She sighed. "I suppose Susan will know how to work it well enough anyway." She grabbed the camera and skipped out of the house, down the road and into the garden.

Susan was waiting at the start of the garden. "Come on." She said shortly, not because she was cross but because she was excited and eager.

"What are we doing anyway?" Lucy asked curiously, tightening her grip on the camera.

"We're going to show them the fairies, of course." Susan said happily.

"Oh, Susan, no!" Lucy cried out in a horrified voice. "We can't betray the fairies like that. They trust us!"

"It's not betrayal, Lucy, it's for Mum and dad." She explained as they got nearer to where they often met up with the fairies.

"But what if they put a curse on us?" Lucy asked her, looking very nervous.

Susan snorted and rolled her eyes. Clearly she didn't believe in curses.

"Susan...we can't do this." Lucy insisted. "We just can't."

"But don't you want our parents to see them?" Susan asked.

"Well, yes." Lucy admitted. "but not like this!"

"What other way is there?" Susan crossed her arms. "And think of it this way, it'll clear Peter's name. Mum and Dad will know he wasn't telling lies."

That worked. Lucy couldn't say no to that. "Alright fine, but the only people we show them too is Mum, dad, and Marjorie."

"How did Marjorie get in there?" Susan wanted to know.

"She's my friend and I know she'd love to see the fairies too." Lucy explained. "In fact, if she isn't allowed to see them, I wont go along with this."

Susan shrugged. "Alright then, it's settled. The only people to see these fairies will be, Marjorie, Mum, and dad." She stretched out her hand.

Lucy hesitated a moment before shaking it.

Susan gave her sister a hug. "Thank you! You wont regret it."

"Can I get that in writing?" Lucy laughed as she handed the camera to her sister.

"Call them." Susan ordered.

"Fairies..." Lucy called. "Here...fairies..."

"You sound like you're calling a dog." Susan rolled her eyes.

"Oh hush up." Lucy laughed before she began calling them again.

Finally, one leaped up from the bush so close to Lucy's face that she thought it might touch her. She was so startled that she flinched a little. Susan took a photo.

Later more fairies and their gnomes arrived and the girls took turns taking the photographs.

There was one with Lucy and her leaping fairy, one with Susan bending down to speak with a gnome, one with Lucy resting her head on the palms of her hands with a dreamy expression surrounded by a bunch of fairies, and one with Susan giving a crumb of cake to Rosie.

"That should be enough." Susan decided, packing up the camera. "More than four photos might get out too easily."

Later, in a dark room with her father, Susan watched the photos come into focus. Would the fairies be there or not? Could one actually capture them on film?

"Susan, what's all this mess around Lucy?" Mr. Pevensie noticed bizarre images forming around the image of his youngest child.

"Lucy!" Susan cried out to her sister who was waiting on the other side of the dark room door. "They're in the photographs! I can see them!" A grin of pure joy formed on her face. "We did it!"

"Yes!" Lucy cried jumping up and down. They'd done it. They'd gotten real fairy photographs. Their parents would have to believe in fairies now.


	3. Are they real?

"Alright, out with it." Mr. Pevensie said calmly but sternly staring down his daughters who sat at the kitchen table with their fairy photos spread out in front of them. "How'd you do it?"

"Do what?" Lucy asked, bewildered. Did they really think she and Susan would fake such a thing?

"Susan?" Mrs. Pevensie looked at her oldest daughter. "Tell the truth...how did you do this?"

"We just took the photographs, Mum." Susan insisted.

"They're real fairies." Lucy told them, handing the photo of herself and the leaping fairy to her father.

"Girls, you can't expect us to believe that you really played with fairies." Mr. Pevensie shook his head. "Please don't lie to us."

Edmund walked into the room. "Lucy doesn't lie." He stood up for her. He couldn't help over hearing them.

"She never has before, but this..." Mrs. Pevensie looked doubtful. Her daughters weren't liars but she didn't believe there were really fairies at the bottom of Mrs. Esmara's garden. And yet, she couldn't help but think, not only that the girls looked honest but that creatures in the photographs were remarkably life-like.

Edmund grinned at his sisters. The only girls clever enough to actually get photographs of the mysterious winged beings. "Let me see." He said reaching for the photographs.

Susan fought the urge to grab the photographs before Edmund could reach them. They hadn't planned on showing him the fairies. But he was their brother and besides, he already knew about them. He wouldn't tell anyone.

"You got so close to them!" Edmund gasped in amazement. He knew they'd played with fairies but this was incredible! The leaping fairy was a mere half-inch away from Lucy's face. She could've turned her nose and make contact with it if she had chosen. And that Gnome was so nearby Susan that if she had wanted to, she could have snatched him up, put him in a wash basket and brought him home with her.

"Edmund, you aren't saying you believe in all this nonsense do you?" Mr. Pevensie asked.

"It's not nonsense." Edmund insisted. "Just look at these, they're more real than anything ever photographed by anyone." He picked up the photograph of Susan and her shy fairy, Rosie. "I mean just look at this!"

Lucy grinned at him. Susan managed a half smile before turning back to her mother with pleading eyes. She had done this mainly for her parents. She wanted to give them something. She wasn't sure what. Something with hope in it. Something to believe in. Why wouldn't they just take what she yearned to offer them?

"Children, go up to your rooms until I call you down for supper." Mrs. Pevensie ordered.

Lucy nodded and stood up. Susan shook her head angrily, grabbing the photographs in her hands. She refused to leave them with unbelievers. She wondered if Lucy had felt this awful when no one had believed her about the wardrobe at the professor's house being magic. Actually, Lucy had felt worse, no one had believed her. At least now, Susan had both Edmund and Lucy on her side. And if Peter was there, he would have believed her as well.

Downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie whispered back and forth.

"Do you believe them?" Mrs. Pevensie asked her husband. "They seemed so sure..."

"Helen, they can't possibly be telling the truth." Mr. Pevensie said.

"Those photos..." Mrs. Pevensie sighed, grabbing her vegetable cutting knife, starting to prepare supper. "Why do you suppose they'd want to fool us in the first place?"

"I don't know." Mr. Pevensie said, rubbing his temples. "But I do know that there aren't any fairies. Not in Mrs. Esmara's garden and not anywhere else either."

"Part of me wants so badly to believe them..." Helen admitted, getting a little misty eyed.

"I don't know what would be more frightening." Mr. Pevensie said softly. "If the girls are lying to us, or if they're telling us the truth."

The next morning, Lucy got up and dressed as quickly as she could. She wanted to go to Marjorie's today. She couldn't wait to show her the fairy photographs.

"Susan, may I have the photos?" Lucy asked before heading downstairs.

"Why?" Susan wasn't quick to part with them.

"So I can take them to Marjorie." Lucy explained. "You promised I could show them to her, remember?"

"Yes, yes." Susan grumbled, handing her sister the photos. "I remember."

"Do you want to come?" Lucy offered, noticing the sad look on Susan's face. "It'll be fun."

"No thank you." Susan sighed. "Marjorie's your friend, you should be the one to show them to her."

"But you could come too." Lucy protested.

Susan shook her head. "I'd rather stay here."

"Alright." Lucy gave in. "I'll be back soon."

Lucy walked the two street blocks to Marjorie's house and knocked on the door.

Marjorie's mother answered. "Oh, hullo, Lucy."

"Hullo Mrs. Preston." She said politely. "Is Marjorie home?"

"Yes, do come in." Mrs. Preston held the door open so she could walk in.

The house smelled warm and rich. Clearly Mrs. Preston had been baking again. It smelled like vanilla, Lucy noticed. Her mouth watered at the thought of vanilla cake and she almost forgot why she'd come in the first place. That is until Marjorie came downstairs and greeted her. Then she remembered what she had to show her.

"Lucy!" She said happily. "What a surprise. I didn't know you were coming today."

"Well, I have something to show you." Lucy told her. "Can we go to your room?"

"We'll be upstairs, mum." Marjorie announced, grabbing Lucy's hand. The two girls raced up the stairs as quickly as they could. As soon as they reached Marjorie's bedroom, they shut the door behind them.

"Look at this." Lucy was fairly bubbling with excitement as she handed the photographs to her friend.

Marjorie let out a gasp. "Oh my god!" She screamed so loudly, that Lucy became afraid that Mrs. Preston might hear, and covered her friend's mouth until she regained composure.

"Sorry..." Marjorie said. "It's just..." She looked at the photograph of Lucy surrounded by fairies. "How did you get these?"

Lucy lowered her voice to a whisper. "At the bottom of Mrs. Esmara's garden. Susan and I have been playing with real fairies down there."

Marjorie pouted and slapped Lucy's arm. "You might have told me sooner."

"I thought you mightn't believe me without proof." Lucy explained. Then she added a tease, "and I worried your loud squeals of joy would scare them off."

"They're so beautiful!" Marjorie said in a tone of wondered. "I never knew they'd be so wonderful."

"They are everything the stories say." Lucy admitted. "They really do enjoy cake."

"And so friendly," Marjorie pointed to the one with Susan and Rosie. "I mean just look at that fairy with your sister."

"She wont come close to me." Lucy told her. "She only likes Susan. But the others play with us both."

"Oh, will you take me to see them?" Marjorie begged, with her hands pressed together. "I do so want to see a fairy."

"I don't know if they'll come around if there's more people than just Susan and I there." Lucy said doubtfully.

"Well couldn't I just hide somewhere and watch?" Marjorie suggested. "Please?"

I should have known the photographs wouldn't be enough for her. Lucy thought almost bitterly. "Maybe, if you were really quiet..."

Marjorie leaped up and hugged her friend. "Oh, thank you, thank you."

"But you can't tell anyone." Lucy said sternly, giving her a sharp look.

"I wont." Marjorie promised. "not a soul. Not even if they threaten me."

"Alright then." Lucy said.

"So when can I see them?" Marjorie asked.

"When do you want to?"

"Today?" She suggested, with a hopefully grin on her face.

Half and hour or so later, Lucy, Susan, Edmund, and Marjorie walked through the garden.

"This is a bad idea, Lu." Susan whispered. "Why did you tell her we'd show her the fairies?"

"She only wants to see them, she wont hurt harm them." Lucy insisted. "and what about Edmund? He'll be right there to keep an eye on her."

"But what about what you told me about betrayal and curses?" Susan wondered.

"I thought you didn't believe in it." Lucy shrugged.

"I don't." Susan told her. "but I don't like the idea of too many people knowing about this."

"It's not too many people, Su." Lucy huffed. "The photographs were your idea in the first place. And it's only Marjorie and Edmund."

"I know, I know." Susan sighed.

"You know, we can hear you." Edmund said, standing only a little ways behind them.

"Sorry." Susan blushed. "We just care about the fairies, that's all."

Lucy took her brothers hand and led him behind a tree. "You and Marjorie wait here. Susan and I are going to try to herd the fairies this way so you can see them." She said. "But whatever either of you do, don't move."

"My feet are rooted to the spot." Marjorie squealed bouncing up and down on the tips of her toes.

"Marjorie, if you can't be calm..." Susan warned her.

"No, I'll be good." Marjorie said. "I'll stay right here with Edmund, I promise."

Lucy and Susan went down to where they often met the fairies. They found them and played a game of chase. Unfortunately for Edmund and Marjorie, the fairies wouldn't fly towards the tree where they were waiting but were intent on flying about in the other direction.

"Sorry you didn't see any." Lucy told them at twilight when they'd given up and were headed home.

"It's okay, Lu." Edmund said supportively. "Maybe some other time."

Susan and Edmund went ahead into the house. Lucy and Marjorie stayed behind.

"Lucy, can I borrow the photographs?" She asked.

"No!" Lucy gasped, clutching the little tin box she kept them in a little tighter.

"Please?" Marjorie begged. "I only want to look at them some more."

"They're my photographs." Lucy said. "Mine and my sister's I can't let you take them."

"Please, share them." Marjorie begged. "I waited all that time and not one fairy. Couldn't I just keep the photos for tonight?"

"You won't show them to anyone?" Lucy asked.

"No." Marjorie said.

"And you give them right back to me in the morning when I come to visit?" Lucy asked.

"Yes." Marjorie said.

"Alright then." Lucy gave in, handing her the precious tin.

"Oh thank you!" Marjorie hugged her friend before running home with her borrowed treasures.

That night before bed, Marjorie was taking on last look at the beautiful photographs. Lucy was so lucky to have seen those fairies. And to know them. And to play with them.

"What have you got there?" She hadn't heard her mother enter the room.

"Oh nothing." Marjorie said. "Just some photographs. They're Lucy's I'm to give them back tomorrow morning."

"Let me see." Mrs. Preston said.

Surely my mum wont tell anyone about the fairies, Marjorie thought handing the photos over to her mother.

Mrs. Preston's eyes widened as she saw the unbelievable. Little Lucy Pevensie surrounded by fairies. Could it be real? She would have thought it a complete fake had not her father been old friends with a photo-man years ago. The man had once told her that to fake a photograph you had to know a lot about cameras. Lucy and Susan knew only the bare minimums about them. You could tell just by the quality of the shot. Was it possible that the creatures, whatever they were, were real and not added in later?

She took the photos and showed them to her husband.

"Good heavens!" Mr. Preston exclaimed.

"Do you think..." Mrs. Preston started.

"I know how we can find out." Mr. Preston said. "Tomorrow we can take the photos over to Mr. Trent. He lives reasonably nearby and he's an expert on photography."

"Good idea." Mrs. Preston said. "Will he mind?"

"No, Mr. Trent and I go way back. Even if we haven't seen each other much in resent years." Mr. Preston explained. "He'll be glad enough to help. And if these are real...can you imagine what that would imply?"

Mrs. Preston shook her head in wonder. "I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the idea."

"I'm just going to give Mr. Trent a phone call to let him know we'll be over there tomorrow." Mr. Preston said, picking up the phone.

 _Ring Ring_ In the quiet office, where nothing besides the tick-tocking of the clock could be heard, the phone ringing made the only two people in the room jump.

Mr. Trent picked up the phone. "Hello?" He listened to Mr. Preston on the other end. "What kind of photos are they?" He paused for a moment. "Well if you really feel you'd rather just show me whatever it is tomorrow that's okay too...yes, sure thing, you come on by." Mr. Preston thanked him. "Alright then, good-bye."

"Mr. Trent, who was that?" The other person in the room asked. It was a teenage boy, tall and blonde with blue eyes. He went by the name of Rupert and as of late had been something of a companion to Mr. Trent whom he felt indebted to because he'd pretty much saved his life.

"A friend of mine wants me to go over some photos tomorrow." He explained. "Nothing big. I probably wont even charge him for it."

Rupert cringed as he shifted his leg. It had been badly hurt and was taking it's sweet time healing.

"How's the leg today, Rupert?" Mr. Trent asked.

"Same as yesterday." Rupert told him. "You would think after all this time it would have healed."

"Boy, I'm no doctor but you had numerous breaks in that leg of yours small ones, big ones, it'll take some time...you just need rest." Mr. Trent said kindly.

"Thank you." Rupert said. "For everything."

"Don't mention it." Mr. Trent gave him an understanding smile and then turned his mind to wondering what kind of photographs his friend was going to bring him the next day.


	4. Fairy Rings and Funerals

"What do you mean, you don't have the photographs?" Susan asked, shooting an angry glance at her sister's friend who'd arrived at their house sobbing, carrying an empty tin.

"Mum took them." Marjorie explained, crying so hard that Susan just barely understood what she was saying. "I thought she'd give them right back, but she gave them to my dad who's having them tested."

"Tested?" Lucy asked. "Tested for what?"

Marjorie gulped down another sob before answering. "Tested to see if the fairies in it are real or something like that. Oh, Lucy, I'm so sorry!" She burst into even more tears, her whole body shaking. "I begged them not to. I cried and sulked and nothing!"

"I can't believe Lucy let you take the photographs home with you in the first place." Susan snapped, glaring at her little sister. "What were you thinking?"

"Please don't blame Lucy." Marjorie cried. "it's all my fault!"

"No it isn't." Lucy said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Come now, don't cry anymore, it'll be alright."

"But what about them poor fairies?" Bawled Marjorie. "People will come with big nets and..." She couldn't finish her sentence, she threw her head into her hands.

"Mrs. Esmara's garden is private property, Marjorie." Susan told her, starting to calm down a bit, and beginning to feel sorry for Marjorie even though it was her fault they'd lost the photos. "And besides, your mum wouldn't tell anyone where the photos where taken, would she?"

Marjorie brightened up a little at that. "Probably not."

"That's right." Susan said. "Now we have to be more careful in the future. We have got to get those photographs back as soon as possible, and then put them under lock and key."

Meanwhile, Mr. Trent was examining the photos with a look of pure marvel written all over his face.

"So are they real?" Mr. Preston asked.

Mr. Trent nodded. "They're single shot, untouched, exposures." He assured him.

"The fairies...are they...?" Mrs. Preston asking, clenching her hands with excitement.

Mr. Trent let out a friendly little laugh. "I wouldn't know a fairy from a dragon fly, but let me tell you two things, one, whatever is in this shot was not added in later but really there at the time of exposure and two," He let go of the photograph of Susan and the gnome, picking up the one of Lucy surrounded by the fairies and added. "The wings shown in this photo were really in motion at the moment of exposure."

Mr. and Mrs. Preston caught their breath in their chests and looked at each other shaking their heads. The fairy photos weren't fakes! What did that mean for the world?

Suddenly a loud wail erupted from another room, cutting into their thoughts.

"Good heavens!" Mrs. Preston said, putting her hand to her heart. "What is that?"

Mr. Trent sighed. "Rupert must be having another nightmare." he clicked his tongue. "Poor boy."

"Who's Rupert?" Mr. Preston asked.

"That's right, you don't know." Mr. Trent said, cleaning his photo-studying glasses as he spoke. "Rupert is a boy I found-half dead-in the bushes of my back yard."

"Ugh, how horrid." Mrs. Preston gasped. "What had happened to him?"

"I'm not sure, but I was relaxing in my yard after raking my leaves, when I saw a thin stream of blood pouring out from the bushes." Mr. Trent explained. "I discovered that somehow or other, an injured boy had gotten in there." He shuddered as he went on. "He was weak and one of his legs was extremely messed up. The poor boy was in so much pain that he kept fainting, waking up, and then fainting again."

"Was he able to speak?" Mr. Preston asked.

"Once he mumbled, 'Is he okay?', but before I could ask him who he meant, he fainted again and didn't remember what he'd been talking about afterwards." Mr. Trent said. "It was horrible. But he's recovering nicely. I just wish I could find his family, if he has any."

"Can't Rupert just tell you who his family is?" Mrs. Preston asked.

"He doesn't remember." Mr. Trent told her. "He suffers from extreme memory loss. The only way I even knew his name was Rupert, was because he had a pocket watch with his name engraved on it."

"That's terrible." Mr. Preston said sadly. "But he's doing fairly well?"

Mrs. Trent shook his head. "Some of the time he is. Early afternoons are hard for him."

"Why?" Mr. Preston asked.

"Because the drugs the doctor has him take for the pain in his leg make him sleepy and he has the most dreadful nightmares." Mr. Trent explained. "For some reason he doesn't get them at night, only in the afternoon."

"Maybe it's the drugs that induces the nightmares?" Mrs. Preston thought aloud.

"I've often wondered if that was the case." Mr. Trent admitted. "However, the doctor assures me that his disturbing dreams are due to trauma. And he would know better than I."

"I see, well thank you very much for looking over the photographs, Mr. Trent." Mr. Preston said gratefully. "How much do we owe you?"

Mrs. Preston opened her purse.

Mr. Trent shook his head. "No, I wont charge you this time." He smiled at them. "But next week if you come back with some photographs of Elves, then we'll talk about payment."

"Okay then, thank you very much." Mr. and Mrs. Preston left.

"I'd best go and check on Rupert now." Mr. Trent said to himself, walking into the room where Rupert laid on the couch, his eyes wide open; staring at the ceiling, his face as white as a sheet.

"Are you alright?" Mr. Trent asked.

Rupert shook his head. "She was so scared." He said softly.

"Who was?" Mr. Trent raised an eyebrow in surprise. This was a new one.

"I had a horrible dream." Rupert told him.

"What else is new?" Mr. Trent sighed. "Do tell, what was this one about?"

Rupert gulped. "A girl...She was...running away from a wolf." he shook his head. "she made it to this big tree...but she couldn't get any higher than the first branch...I just knew she was going to faint, fall right off, and that the wolf was going to get her...it was horrible."

"Why do you keep your hand at your side like that?" Mr. Trent asked, noticing Rupert's curled fingers next to the right side of his pant's pockets, as if he expected something to be there. Something he could grab a hold of.

"I don't know." Rupert told him. "I keep waking up like that."

"I don't care what that doctor says." Mr. Trent said, half-jokingly. "We need to give you less pain killers."

"I'm sorry to be such a bother." Rupert said.

"Don't worry about it, you've been a very agreeable guest." Mr. Trent laughed. "I got word from my sister, you know the one who visited here last month. My little nieces apparently talk about you constantly."

Rupert chuckled a little at that. He liked Mr. Trent's little nieces his favorite was the middle girl, who was about seven or eight. She reminded him of someone but he wasn't sure who.

Twilight, at Esmara's garden, Edmund went looking for his sisters. He was supposed to call them in for supper. "Susan! Lucy!" He called out, with his hands cupped around his mouth to make the sound travel farther. No answer. "Lucy! Susan!" He took another step, not watching where he was going, right into the middle of a ring of mushrooms.

Suddenly Edmund heard a horrified gasp and felt two sets of arms yank him out of there as quickly as they could. They pulled so hard that all three of them, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy landed on the ground piled on top of one another.

"Edmund!" Susan scolded, getting up and brushing the grass off of her skirt. "Never, never, step in a fairy ring!"

"I know..." Thoughts of the horrible stories of what happened to those who ignored the fairy rule of staying out of the fairy rings, flooded through his mind and he cursed himself for being so stupid. "I was careless." He sat up and looked around. He'd never been so thankful to be on ordinary grass with his sisters in his life.

"They could have captured you!" Susan whispered sharply, reaching out and slapping her brother upside the head.

"Ow!" Edmund moaned, rubbing his head.

"You do know what to do if the fairies capture you, right?" Lucy asked him. She wanted to be sure her brother would be safe if this happened again.

"Well..." Edmund wasn't sure.

"Don't eat or drink anything they give you." Lucy warned him, clinging on to his arm. "or you could be there forever."

"Don't eat or drink." 'Edmund noted. "got it."

"Now why were you hollering for us?" Susan asked crossly. "you frightened Rosie and her gnome-in-waiting away."

"It's time for supper." Edmund told his sisters.

They headed back up and out of the garden.

After supper, Susan was helping Helen with the dishes when the phone rang and Mr. Pevensie went to pick it up.

"Hello?" Mr. Pevensie said. His eyebrows went so far up that Lucy thought they might fly off is face. "You did what? Why? No, no, they're not...but...well I can't see why...alright then. Thank you good-bye." Mr. Pevensie hung up the phone.

"Who was that?" Helen asked her husband, handing a plate and a dish towel to Susan, "You can dry."

"That was Mr. Preston, Marjorie's father." Mr. Pevensie told them. "He had your photographs tested, and is now convinced that they are genuine."

Lucy's eyes widened and she tightened her grip on the table she was sitting at. Susan gulped and prayed that they didn't...

"Mr. Preston had a few copies made." Mr. Pevensie added.

...They did.

"He hadn't any right to do that." Susan fumed. "Those were ours. He ought to have asked us first."

"Anyway," Mr. Pevensie ignored that comment. "He's sent the copies to Colin Lee Marcus."

 _crash._ Susan had dropped her plate on the floor. It shattered into a million pieces. No amount of glue would ever make it a whole plate again. But she didn't worry about the plate now, She barely noticed Edmund getting the broom and dust pan to sweep it up with. All she could think of was Colin Lee Marcus and how he'd react when he saw the photographs.

"Be careful, Su." Edmund told her, cleaning up all the sharp china bits as he spoke.

"Colin Lee Marcus, where I have heard that name before?" Lucy wondered aloud.

"Oh, Lu, don't you remember?" Susan asked. "He's a famous writer. He wrote a popular book on fairies years ago."

"That's right!" Lucy recalled, suddenly remembering seeing a book entitled, "In the realm" by Colin Lee Marcus on Peter's desk that night when she'd found all the fairy drawings. She wondered if she ought to sneak back in there and have a look at the book but knew it wasn't a good idea. Unlike the drawings that weren't in plain sight in the room, the book had been right out on the desk. If she moved it and Mum happened to peer into the room and happened to notice, she would be in big trouble.

"What do you think Mr. Lee Marcus will do?" Edmund whispered to Susan as the three of them went up to bed for the night.

"I don't know." Susan looked very worried. "But he wont know where the garden is, will he?"

Edmund shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"I think we ought to bring more cake with us next time we go to see the fairies." Lucy sighed. "To say we're sorry for exposing them like that."

"You didn't mean it, Lu." Edmund said kindly. "You and Su were only trying to do something nice for Mum and dad."

"Do you think it'll turn out alright in the end, Ed?" Susan asked.

"I hope so." Edmund said. "I really hope so."

"Edmund?" Lucy said.

"Yes?"

"I'm really glad the fairies didn't take you away." Lucy hugged him.

The next morning, Lucy went to see the fairies by herself, knowing Susan would probably join her later if she wanted to. She made sure to sneak some cake from the kitchen into her pocket before setting off. She also took her school slate and some chalk with her. She thought she might like to practice drawing the fairies herself. But not on something permanent that could be found and questioned later, only one something that could be cleaned off whenever she needed it to be.

She sat quietly, watching ten fairies and six gnomes play together with a tiny acorn. Lucy groaned looking down at the drawing she'd made on the slate. It was horrible. She wished she could draw like Peter and Susan. With a heavy sigh, she wiped the slate clean.

Two of the fairies suddenly stopped playing and flew over to her.

"Hullo." Lucy said to them.

The two of them lifted the chalk and motioned for Lucy to take it.

"Do you want me to write something?" Lucy asked.

She thought one of the fairies nodded at her, so she held the chalk and added, "What should I write?"

The fairies didn't seem to want her to write anything, they seemed intent only on guiding her hand, it took four fairies to do this. To spell out something on her slate. They were trying to tell her something.

With great strain, they managed to push Lucy's hand to write the letter R. Then taking a deep breath, worked on a U. When they had finally finished, Lucy noticed that the fairies had spelled out a name. "Rupert".

Who's Rupert? Lucy thought to herself. The fairies were looking at her as if expecting her to understand what they meant. Maybe "Rupert" meant something in Fairy talk?

"Hey, Lucy!" Edmund came running, accidentally frightening away the fairies before he could get close.

"What's going on?" Lucy asked.

"Mum wanted me to come get you, I don't know why, she was crying...she seemed really upset." Edmund stopped and looked down at the slate, "Have a bit of a crush on a boy named Rupert, do you?"

Lucy shook her head. "I didn't write this." she told him. "The fairies did."

"Why would the fairies write 'Rupert' on your slate?" Edmund asked.

"You're guess is as good as mine." Lucy shrugged, packing up her things. "So what's wrong with Mum?"

"I don't know." Edmund said. "She wants us all together, to tell us something."

"Do you think it's something about Colin Lee Marcus?" Lucy asked him.

Edmund shook his head. "No, she's much too upset for it to be that."

When they arrived home, Their mother had them all sit down on the couch. "I've gotten some..." She stopped, trying to fight the urge to cry again. "news, about your brother..."

Edmund, Lucy, and Susan all held hands. All hoping she wouldn't say what they thought she was about to say.

"He's..." A few tears escaped. "...dead."

"No!" Lucy cried.

"How...when..." Edmund's mouth trembled as he spoke and he couldn't get out a full sentence.

Susan was silent with quiet tears rolling down her face.

Mrs. Pevensie was crying so hard now that Mr. Pevensie had to take over explaining the matter to the children. "They found a boy's body under the wreck...Peter is the only boy in that age group not accounted for."

A week later, there was a funeral. Standing with the others dressed head-to-toe in black, Lucy had the strange feeling that this funeral was not for her brother, but for someone else. She still thought Peter was going to come home. She could tell her self over and over, "Peter is dead." but she couldn't make herself believe it.

Susan and Edmund each put a rose on the top of his coffin before turning to leave with their parents.

Lucy lifted up her long black dress and tip-toed over to the coffin after everyone had placed their flowers and left. She had a rose of her own to put on the coffin and told her parents she wanted to do it by herself. Looking both ways, to be sure no one was watching, Lucy lifted the coffin lid, causing most of the flowers to fall to the ground. They'd all said she couldn't see him because he was messed up beyond any recognition. But she had to see him. She had to see his dead body with her own eyes before she could believe he was really gone.

In the coffin there was indeed a boy about Peter's age, his hair was blonde like Peter's. His face was bruised, burned, and scarred so much that Lucy couldn't tell for sure if it was Peter's face or not. But she noticed right above his slightly burned, left brow, there was no light coma shaped scar. Rather it was the only bit of unruined smooth skin on the boy's face. Peter had a light comma-shaped scar there from his fight with the white witch. It was very mild because it had healed well and if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't notice it. However, if you were looking for it and were standing close enough, you simply couldn't miss it. Lucy knew the truth now, This wasn't Peter.


	5. Nothing but the truth and a promise

Black, black, black. I _hate_ black, Lucy thought as she buttoned up a black frock for the fifth (or was it the sixth?) day in a row.

They all had to wear black because they were in mourning. They were in morning for their dead brother. They were in mourning for their dead brother who wasn't even really dead.

Of course as soon as Lucy had found out the truth about the boy in the coffin, she'd raced to Edmund and Susan to tell them.

"Edmund! Susan!" Lucy had cried happily. "Peter isn't dead."

Edmund looked surprised but didn't say anything.

Susan sighed and gently reached out and tucked a stray strand of Lucy's hair behind her ear in a very motherly way. "Lucy, I know it's hard...but we have to except that he's gone, he's dead, there's no use pretending any different."

"But that's just it," Lucy said. "He isn't dead! The boy in the coffin isn't our brother!"

"What do you mean, Lu?" Edmund asked her.

"Just what I said." Lucy told him. "After you all left, I lifted the lid of the coffin,"

"Oh, Lucy, you shouldn't have!" Susan said in a disappointed tone.

"But I had to." Lucy protested. "I had to know."

"And?" Edmund asked, clearly on edge and not able to handle another second of uncertainty.

"He didn't have a scar near his brow." Lucy said, smiling at her siblings, hoping they understood what that implied.

"What does that..." Edmund started before it dawned on him. The coma shaped blood mark (Which is what it was before it became a scar) was one of the first things he'd noticed after Lucy had saved him with her magic cordial. "...his fight with the white witch!"

"Then it really wasn't him!" Susan grabbed her little sister's hand. "Come, let's go tell Mum and dad."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Edmund jumped in front of them. "Just what are you going to tell them? That you know the boy in the coffin isn't Peter because in a magical land 15 years ago or a matter of months ago, whichever it really is, he fought a witch and got a scar?"

Susan's face fell. He was right. Their parents didn't know about Narnia. They wouldn't believe them if they told them. After all, they were still uncertain about the fairies and they had seen actual photos!

Lucy had hoped once she told her siblings the truth, they'd finally believe that Peter wasn't dead. But although they believed that the boy in the coffin wasn't Peter, they thought he might be dead all the same. Just not found yet.

"And that alone is worth mourning, Lucy." Susan had reminded her one morning when they were getting dressed, tying a black ribbon into Lucy's hair.

Lucy had never been one to care for clothes (Except in Narnia where clothes are very different from what they are in our world) but she couldn't bear the cheerlessness of the mourning color. Fairies, she was sure, never wore black.

She wondered what the fairies thought of her for wearing it so many days in a row. Did they secretly laugh? Feel sorry for her? Wish harder than ever that she understood whatever it was they meant by 'Rupert'?

"Lucy, don't step there, it's-" Susan started as she saw Lucy taking a step next to a very muddy slope in Mrs. Esmara's garden.

With a slight gasp, Lucy slid, down the small hilly grass getting a long trail of mud on the skirt of her black frock.

"-Slippery." Susan shook her head and sighed. You could always count on Lucy to get into a scrape.

"Did you bring cake?" Lucy asked her sister as she picked herself off of the wet dewy ground and tried to wipe some of the mud off her clothes.

"Yes," Susan told her, She spread out the blanket for them to sit on. Not that it would do any good for Lucy seeing as she'd already soiled her clothing.

Sitting, looking out at the water, the girls quietly threw cake crumbs to the fairies who seemed to sense that they're human friends were sad and stayed more of a distance away from them than usual.

"Su, do you know anyone named Rupert?" Lucy asked, throwing a crumb to a pudgy gnome with a pointing top hat made out of a little tree root.

"The only Rupert I ever knew was grandfather." Susan said, trying in vain to coax Rosie to come closer.

"We have a grandfather named Rupert?" Lucy asked.

"On mother's side." Susan told her. "You wouldn't remember, he died when you were really small. Why do you ask?"

Lucy shrugged. "I was trying to figure out what the fairies are trying to tell us."

"The fairies are trying to tell us something?"

"Well, they made me write 'Rupert' on my slate." Lucy explained. "And I can't figure out why."

"Hmm." Susan looked very thoughtful.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucy noticed her sister's face looked the way it did whenever she had an idea.

"Grandpa Rupert believed Peter about the fairies." She said.

"Did he?" Lucy asked.

"Of course he did, he and Peter were very close." Susan said softly. "They both trusted each other whole heartedly. Shortly before he died, Grandfather gave him his pocket watch as a gift."

"Oh, yes, I remember the watch." Lucy recalled the long gold watch on a chain with little engraved marks she'd never actually read on it. "Peter used to swing it in front of me to play with when I was little."

"And you were like a pet cat about it." Susan teased, not unkindly.

Suddenly Lucy had a light bulb moment. "Su!" She gasped. "Maybe that's it!"

"Maybe what's it?" Susan wrinkled her forehead.

"Maybe the fairies are trying to tell us, something about Peter's watch." She said excitedly.

"Why would they care about the watch?" Susan wondered.

"I don't know." Lucy admitted. "But the watch belonged to Grandpa Rupert. Which would explain why they used that name."

"Lu, if they wanted to tell us something about Peter, why wouldn't they just have written his name on the slate?" Susan said practically.

"Maybe it's about grandfather then." Lucy suggested. "Something they want us to know."

"But what?" Susan was at a loss for ideas as far as that was concerned.

"I don't know." Sighed Lucy.

"Lucy! Susan!" A breathless, panting, Edmund came running up to them causing the fairies to retreat even further into the bushes. "You wont believe what I just heard Mum and Dad talking about!"

"What is it, Ed?" Susan asked.

Edmund paused to catch his breath. "Colin Lee Marcus got the photographs Mr. Preston sent."

"Oh?" Susan asked, still angry that Mr. Preston had sent them in the first place.

"Yes and he's coming here to meet both of you tomorrow." Edmund told them. "He wants to talk with you."

Lucy just barely held back the excited squeal forming in her throat. She couldn't help it. A famous author wanted to talk to them! He thought their photographs were interesting. He thought _they_ were interesting. And because he was a visitor, there was a good chance they wouldn't have to wear black tomorrow. The excitement was marred only by the fear that he would want to see the fairies himself. Or would want to expose them as the first girls in England (or even the world) to have ever played with fairies.

Susan, being older and caring less about famous writers than Lucy did, felt all of the dread and none of the excitement. What did he want to talk to them about.? Would he bring harm to the fairies?

"Alright." Susan gave her siblings a firm look. "The three of us have to make a promise."

"What kind of promise?" Lucy asked curiously.

"The kind that lasts for ever." Susan said darkly. "Let's all sit in a circle."

"Why?" Edmund asked.

"Just do it." Susan ordered.

Edmund sighed and sat down. "This had better be good."

"Now let's all hold hands." She said.

Lucy grabbed on to Edmund's hand and felt Susan grab her free hand. "Okay, Ed, grab on to my hand."

"You're starting to freak me out." Edmund told her.

"Just do it!" Susan hissed.

"Okay, okay." Edmund rolled his eyes and grabbed a hold of her hand.

"Repeat after me." Susan told them. "I, Susan Pevensie,"

"I, Susan Pevensie." Edmund repeated just to be smart.

Lucy broke out in a fit of laughter and had to let go of her brother's hand to try to muffle the noise.

Susan glared at him. "Do be serious, Ed."

"Sorry." Edmund became serious, Lucy stopped laughing, and they all held hands again. "I, Edmund Pevensie,"

"I, Lucy Pevensie," Lucy said dutifully.

"Promise never again to break the code of fairy secrecy." Susan said.

Edmund cringed a little. "You know I've never even met these fairies."

"That doesn't matter." Susan told him sternly. "You're in on this too."

Susan waited a moment.

"Promise never again to break the code of fairy secrecy." Edmund said finally.

Lucy shifted uncomfortably.

"Lu?" Susan looked at her little sister. "Your turn."

Lucy hesitated. "But-"

"Lucy-" Susan didn't understand why she was having such a hard time with this.

"What about Marjorie?" Lucy said partly because she was curious and partly because she was stalling. She was stalling because she didn't like the idea of making a promise they couldn't keep. Or even fully understand. After all what did breaking the code of fairy secrecy really mean? Did it mean never telling anyone about them point blank or was it lenient?

"She's not here." Susan said shortly. "Just say it."

"Swear never again to break the code of fairy secrecy." Lucy gave in.

The next morning Susan and Lucy stayed late in bed. Neither felt like getting up. They were going to meet Colin Lee Marcus today and they were nervous about what it was he wanted from them.

"Susan?" Lucy asked, rolling over to face her sister's bed.

"Hmm?" Susan answered.

"Do you believe Peter's coming back?" Lucy wondered if she was the only one who still thought it was alive.

Susan was quiet for a moment. "Sometimes." She whispered. "Sometimes I think he's just going to walk through the front door and be home again and everything will go back to normal. Then it seems so hopeless." She let out a sigh. "I don't want to believe in anything that could hurt when I realize it's not the truth."

"Do you think he'd know what to do about Mr. Lee Marcus?" Lucy asked.

"More than we do, probably." Susan admitted.

"Maybe I should have taken that book from his room." Lucy said.

"Mum would have been furious." Susan pointed out.

"I know." Lucy said softly.

"We'd best be getting up now." Susan sat up. "It's almost noon and Colin Lee Marcus will be here soon."

Lucy got out of bed and started getting dressed. Thankfully not in black.

Susan slid off her nightdress, replacing it with an undershirt. "I'm going to be sick." She groaned.

"No you're not." Lucy told her.

"I am." Susan insisted, looking for her knee-socks. "My stomach feels like it's doing summersaults."

"Mine's growling." Lucy told her as a slight rumble echoed through the room.

"That's because we skipped breakfast." Susan said practically.

"Oh." Lucy reached over for a sash to tie around the middle of her dress which was slightly too big on her otherwise.

There was a knock at their bedroom door.

"Come in." Lucy called. They were only half dressed but seeing as the only people in the house were Mum, Dad, and Edmund and there was nothing they hadn't seen before, it didn't matter.

The door creaked open and Mr. Pevensie walked in. "Girls, Colin Lee Marcus is here."

"We'll be down in a minute." Lucy told her father.

"You know, if there's anything you want to tell me-about the photographs-it's not too late." He wasn't convinced that the were of real fairies and wanted to give the girls a chance to confess.

They wanted to protect the fairies but they weren't willing to lie. Both girls kept silent.

"Susan?" Mr. Pevensie tried knowing she was less likely to believe in pretend fairies than Lucy was.

"We'll be down in a minute, Dad." Susan told him. The photographs were real. That much they would always have to stand by no matter what.

And with a sigh, Mr. Pevensie left the room, leaving Susan and Lucy in peace to finish getting ready.


	6. Exposed!

Down stairs, Mrs. Pevensie was serving Edmund, Mr. Pevensie, and Colin Lee Marcus some tea while they waited for the girls to arrive.

Then they heard familiar foot steps on the stairs. Susan and Lucy walked down, properly groomed and ready to meet the mysterious writer.

"Ah, there you are." Mrs. Pevensie said, smiling at her daughters. "This-" She motioned to the man who was now standing up ready to greet the girls he had come all this way to see. "Is Colin Lee Marcus."

As soon as she laid eyes on him, Lucy liked Colin. He was a just a little over being middle aged, perhaps in his mid-fifties. The hair on his head was white as snow but his salt-and-pepper colored mustache didn't match it. The most shocking thing about his appearance was his eyes. They were so dark a blue, that they were very nearly purple. Lucy had read of people with purple eyes in books but had never actually seen a human with them. (A dryad in Narnia she'd once known had had purple eyes that but was about it). More remarkable than the color of them though was the look in them. A look of fairly innocent marvel. Lucy had seen that look before, in Mr. Tumnus. There was something of a relief in seeing that familiar expression in a stranger's face and she suddenly felt much more at ease.

Susan thought Colin seemed like a good fellow. There was a lack of greed in his expression that she had not expected to see. Part of her had expected a pig of a man who would demand that they take him to the fairies. But this man looked reasonable. She didn't take a liking to him as much as her sister did but she didn't feel as nervous now.

"Hullo." He beamed at them, shaking their hands. "It's an honor to finally meet you both."

"It's an honor to meet you, as well, sir." Susan said respectfully.

"Well then, I must tell you that I was utterly amazed when I saw those photographs." He explained, all of them took seats in the parlor now. "I couldn't believe my eyes. But I would never doubt photographs tested by Mr. Trent. I have never met the man but I know of his work. And I also thought you both had such honest faces as well."

"Thank you." Lucy blurted out, not sure what else to say.

"You're welcome." He smiled at her. "Anyway, I've brought something for you both." Colin reached into his briefcase and pulled out two gift wrapped boxes, handing one to each of them.

Susan felt nervous again. She could guess what was in the box if she had to. She slowly pulled back at the wrapping.

Lucy on the other hand, excitedly ripped off the paper and opened the box. She let out a gasp of joy when she saw the beautiful brand new camera. Father had a nice camera but it was old, and this one was so...shinny! And best of all, it was her very own. She even noticed an inscription on the side that said _'Lucy Pevensie'_ in golden-looking letters.

Susan's was exactly the same except her's said, _'Susan Pevensie'_. She gulped and fingered the expensive gift with great care. Why was he giving this to them? It couldn't be just a free gift. He had to want them to do something in return.

"Thank you!" Lucy said in a tone of wonder. "Thank you very much."

The writer seemed pleased with Lucy's reaction but puzzled by Susan's lack of enthusiasm. Obviously, she was the less playful of the two but that didn't mean she wouldn't enjoy getting gifts as well, did it?

"You don't fancy the camera, Miss Pevensie?" Colin Lee Marcus asked Susan.

"It's not that..." Susan said, feeling a flush rise to her cheeks at the thought of how impolite she must have seemed. "I just..." She gave up trying to explain. "No, it's lovely, really."

"I'm glad you like it." Colin Lee Marcus said almost in a sigh.

"Mr. Lee Marcus wants you to take some more photographs of the fairies for him." Mrs. Pevensie told her daughters.

"Yes, of course." Lucy blurted out before stopping to think.

Susan glared at her. "Excuse us for a moment, would you?" She grabbed her sister's wrist and pulled her into another room.

"What are you doing?" Susan demanded harshly.

"What do you mean?" Lucy asked, her eyes filled with such an annoyingly childish innocence that Susan almost wanted to smack her for it.

"We made a promise." Susan reminded her.

Oh, that. Lucy remembered. "We aren't breaking it, not really."

"Taking more photographs for a writer isn't breaking our promise?" Susan snapped in disbelief. How could Lucy say that?

"Not really." Lucy insisted. "Think about it. If he promises not to show them to anyone or something...what harm does it do us to help him out?"

"Are you out of your mind?" Susan hissed. "He hasn't even promised anything."

"Well, then..." Lucy thought it over. "We can refuse to take the photographs if he isn't willing to keep them a secret."

"How do we know we can trust him?" Susan asked.

"I just have the feeling we can." Lucy told her. "He seems so honest."

"Hey, what are you doing in here?" Edmund stuck his head into the room. "Colin Lee Marcus is still waiting for you in the other room."

"Not now, Ed." Susan frowned at him. "We're in the middle of a very important discussion here."

"If it's about taking the photographs for him, I think you should do it." Edmund told them.

"What?" Susan gasped. What was wrong with her siblings today?

"I don't know, but I think we can trust him, Su." Edmund explained. "Why don't you just talk to him about it?"

"Oh alright." Susan gave in. "This doesn't mean I agree to do anything, just that I'm going to consider it."

Lucy and Edmund both smiled happily as the three of them went back into the parlor.

"Girls," Colin said when they'd come back in. "I want to make a few things clear, I don't mean any harm to you, or your fairies."

"You don't?" Susan raised her eyebrow.

"No, of course not." Colin said. "I've just always wanted to see a fairy. But I wont ask you to take me to these. They're your fairies you see, and it's hardly my right to see them in person, but the photographs would be extremely helpful."

"Helpful with what?" Susan asked, looking suspicious.

"I'm going to be completely honest with you." He told them. "I want to put your photographs in a magazine along with one of my articles."

Susan glared at Edmund and Lucy. You see? She thought, I told you he wanted to expose them! What did I tell you?

Lucy shook her head feeling a bit foolish now for agreeing so quickly. "We can't let you do that."

"No, you don't understand." He explained. "It's only to assist my article. The location of the garden will be kept private and all your names will be changed. I want to keep both of you girls, your family, and your fairies out of harms way."

"No one will know it's us?" Susan asked to be sure.

"I give you my word that not a soul will be told your names or whereabouts." Colin Lee Marcus said.

Susan looked at Lucy then back at Colin. Then to her parents and Edmund, and back at Colin again. "Alright." She said. "We'll take a few more photographs."

"Thank you!" Colin's face lit up and he unexpectedly embraced both girls and tightly. "You don't know what this means to me."

"We must get this in writing." Mr. Pevensie told Colin Lee Marcus.

"Yes, of course." He nodded in agreement. "I'll have my lawyers contact you right away."

And so, with cake in their pockets and their new cameras strapped to theirs sides, Susan and Lucy headed back to Mrs. Esmara's garden.

"Can we get one of the queen this time?" Lucy asked her sister.

Susan nodded. "I was thinking the same thing, call her over, she seems to like you best."

"You're majesty." Lucy called. They still hadn't come up will a real name for her. "I have cake." She peeled off a large piece and held it over the bush where the queen often hid.

The queen flew out and grabbed the over-sized cake crumb just as Susan's camera went off. A fifth photograph.

The next photo graphs was of a male fairy and a gnome sitting together on a log playing what looked like the fairy version of checkers. Neither girl was in this one. A sixth photograph.

The seventh was of Susan leaning next to a flower that one of the fairies was peeking out of.

"There." Susan said, as she and her sister packed up their cameras and headed back home. "That's enough. He should be more than content with seven."

Lucy agreed with her on that one. "It's seven more than anyone else has ever had."

"Very, very true." Susan said.

Two weeks later, copies of the magazine hit the stands. Of course, the Pevensie family got an advanced copy first.

"Do they get this in Cambridge?" Lucy wondered aloud, as she flipped through the magazine, thinking about her cousin Eustace. He would probably mock them for ever if he saw this. At least they didn't have to worry about him telling his friends who they were, seeing as he didn't have any.

"Cambridge?" Mr. Pevensie said grumpily. "They get the bloody thing in the north pole."

"Dear!" Mrs. Pevensie scolded him. "Remember, we agreed that this was okay. And they've changed all our names, no one will ever know it's us."

Lucy looked down at the article.

Susan read part of it aloud, _"Two sisters, Ann and Rose Smith are shown here playing with fairies in a local garden. Here we see one of the rare cases of humans in surprisingly close friendships with the members of the fairy realms. The two sisters live comfortably in their home (location withheld) with their parents and their brother, Martin Smith who were the very first to see the first four photographs proved genuine by a photo expert (name withheld)."_

"I'm Martin?" Edmund crinkled his forehead. "What kind of name is that?"

"Oh, hush up Ed." Susan told him, rolling her eyes. "There's not even a picture of you in here."

"Do you think we did the right thing?" Lucy whispered to Susan.

"I think so, look at Mr. Lee Marcus." She pointed to the photograph of him next to the start of the article. "He seems so happy."

"He really does." Lucy smiled feeling satisfied. "And we didn't really break our promise."

"No." Susan said thoughtfully. "I suppose we didn't."

Meanwhile in a newspaper office in a nearby town, a grumpy, sullen looking man, pouted at his desk looking through a magazine. The story was pitched by Colin Lee Marcus who the man thought was a completely fool and generally hated him for no reason other than worthless spite and envy.

"Lies!" He snapped, slamming the magazine down on his desk just as his boss was passing by.

"Well now, Roy, no one's proved that." His boss reminded him. "And everyone takes what Colin Lee Marcus says very seriously now that he has photographs to prove it."

"They're fake." Roy grumbled. "Why else would all these names be withheld?"

"To protect the family?" his boss suggested. "it's been done before."

"I don't believe these girls." Roy said angrily. "I think Colin put them up to it."

The boss clicked his tongue. "What do you have against the man?" He asked. "You've never even met him."

"So?" Roy's bitter-for-no-reason-at-all eyes flashed with even more anger now. "I'm going to prove he's a liar."

"Leave him alone." The boss said. "You don't want to end up looking stupid."

"We'll see who looks stupid when all this is over." Roy said, picking his hat and coat and storming out of the office.

Two days later, Roy stood in a school room at St. Finbar's talking to one of the teacher's there.

"So you know this girl here?" Roy asked, pointing the photograph of Susan and a gnome.

"Oh bless me, yes." The teacher said in a friendly voice. "That's Susan Pevensie! She's a good student. Just like her brothers."

"Brothers?" Roy's eyebrows went up. "She has more than one?"

"She has only one brother living at the time but her late older brother Peter used to attend the school across the street." The teacher explained. "Very good children. I'm told that the youngest, Lucy, will be starting here soon."

"And you are certain you're not mistaken that this is her?" Roy double checked.

"Oh yes, I'm sure." The teacher said. "She and her late brother are quite the artists. Her brother used to draw the most wonderful fairies. And see this?" She pulled out a drawing of two boys and two girls in royal hunting garb chancing a stag. "Susan did it in art class last term."

"Do you know where the place in the photographs are?" Roy asked, not interested in the silly drawings.

"Now that I don't know." The teacher said, apologetically. "But, it's probably near their home in London."

"Can I get the address?" He asked,

"I can't give you that." The teacher told him.

"But I need to find these girls." He said. "it's very important."

"Alright." the teacher gave in. "But tell no one."

The very next day, newspapers that said, " _Fairy Sisters secret identities revealed_ " were on stands everywhere.

Mr. Pevensie was beyond furious when he saw the headline that morning. "Holy s-"

Edmund quickly put his hands over Lucy's ears.

"This is horrible!" Susan cried. "How did this happen?"

"I don't know." Lucy looked down at the newspaper. "but somehow they've found out the location too!"

"The fairies are never going to trust us again!" Susan exclaimed. "People are going to come and..."

Edmund slipped his arm around his older sister. "It's going to be alright."

"No it's not." Susan groaned, pushing her brother away.

"She's right." Lucy blinked back tears. "This is horrible."

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

"Don't answer it." Susan pleaded. "it could be anyone."

"It might just be Marjorie." Lucy reminded her. "She gets even more hysterical about these things than we do."

"I'll get it." Edmund went over to the door.

It was Roy the reporter.

Edmund hated him instantly. His cold greedy eyes, tall slender form, and pale skin, reminded him of the one person he hated more than anyone else the one person who he still had nightmares about, The white witch.

"Hello, Martin." He said in a fake-cheerful voice.

"Go away." Edmund hissed at him. "You're trespassing. And you have already brought us enough trouble."

"I want to talk to your sisters." Roy insisted, putting his foot in the door.

Edmund shook his head slowly and hissed, "Over my dead body." He'd sooner throw himself in front of a moving bus before he let this man come with in ten feet of his sisters.

Roy glared at him and whispered. "I will do whatever I have to do to get what I want, going over your dead body isn't something I mind doing."

Edmund forced himself not to gulp or show any signs of the fear building up in him. He simply turned around and shouted. "Dad, call the police!"

"No need, sir." Roy called over to Mr. Pevensie. Then he turned back to Edmund before leaving. "I'll be back." he hissed in a cold, dead-serious voice.

"Girls, go upstairs." Mr. Pevensie told his daughters. "I'm calling the police anyway, just to be safe."

Edmund grabbed his sister's hands and pulled them upstairs convinced that they weren't going fast enough.

"But, Ed, he's not there now." Susan protested. "You're going to pull my arm off."

"I think he's hiding in the bushes." Edmund whispered to them. "You'll have to be very careful now."


	7. Ring Around The Fairy house

"The fairies are never going to trust us again." Susan said softly as she laid back on her bed looking up at the beams on the ceiling. "What we did is unforgivable."

"What did we do that was so wrong?" Lucy protested in a slightly teary voice. "It wasn't our fault this got out."

"But we knew it could." Susan shook her head. "We put them at risk. We should have known better. _I_ should have known better." She paused for a moment. "Peter would have known better. I failed his fairies and I failed him."

"You don't think he would have taken the photographs?" Lucy asked softly, not sure she agreed with her sister on this one.

"No, I don't." Susan told her.

"Maybe the fairies will understand." Lucy said, as she pulled back the bed covers and crawled in beside her sister. She had her own bed but they were both too shaken up to sleep alone tonight.

"They won't." Susan said, hopelessly. "We've betrayed them."

"Couldn't we do something for them?" Lucy offered.

"Like what?" Susan asked. "What in the world could we ever do for them?"

"We could bring them something." Lucy said, getting a bit of an idea now. "Something to say how sorry we are."

"They wont take cake from us again." Susan said trying not to cry. "I'm sure they'd starve first."

"No, not cake." Lucy knew that wasn't enough. They gave them cake all the time. "Something bigger. Much bigger."

"What else do fairies like besides cake?" Susan pondered aloud.

Lucy thought it over. "They like to dance."

"There's nothing we can give them to help with that." Susan told her. "They have their ring and they haven't used it since Mum, dad, and I made Peter stop believing. They'll play, but they wont dance now. At least not there. Maybe they have another ring somewhere else."

"That's it!" Lucy exclaimed. "I've got an idea."

Susan sat up and looked at her.

"We can build them a house." Lucy told her. "They can't really like living in those bushes, if that's where they really live. And we can use all the fairy chairs, couches, and beds I made for Marjorie. She gave them all back to me because she was upset about her parents taking the photographs to be tested."

"But what do we build the house out of?" Susan asked.

"I've collected a lot of stuff I was going to use to make some more things for Marjorie." Lucy explained. "We'll just use it on the fairy house."

"But what good is a house?" Susan asked. "it's too hopeless, Lucy. It wont make things any better."

"Yes it will." Lucy said. "Hear me out. We'll put it right in the fairy ring so that they know it's theirs to take away and we can use Peter's fairy drawings as wall paper."

Susan was horrified. Could Lucy really be willing to give up their dead brother's drawings? "Have you gone mad? We can't use his drawings! What would mum say?"

"This isn't about mum, Su." Lucy said firmly. "This is about the fairies."

"Alright." Susan gave in. "That's what we'll do then."

Lucy got out of the bed. "I can't sleep, can you?"

"No." Susan admitted. "I'm too nervous."

"We could work on the fairy house tonight so that we could put it in the ring first thing tomorrow."

And so they started to work. Lucy showed Susan how to weave the moss and sticks together to make walls and railings. Susan also made a beautiful chain of acorn tops (which she spray painted gold) to run along the top of the house like extra singles. With long twigs and some extra wood that they'd managed to take from one of their old doll houses, they made a tower with a sort of throne at the top for the queen to sit on. Bark and strong leaves made curtains and doorways. The last thing before they put it all together was the wall paper.

Lucy and Susan crept into Peter's room and opened his desk draw. They took all the fairy drawings they could find. Lucy grabbed a pair of scissors that had been near Peter's closet and fairly out of sight.

With great care, the girls took to cutting out the drawings and pasting them onto the walls of their fairy house.

"Lucy, can you cut these?" Susan asked, handing her the scissors and the remaining drawings. "My hands are shaking too much, I know I'll ruin them if this keeps up."

Lucy took over and finished the job. Soon they had a beautiful, earthy, doll-sized house in front of them. They looked up from their work and out the window. The sun was rising. They'd been working all night.

"Let's take it to the ring now." Lucy suggested. "Before anyone wakes up."

"Is it safe?" Susan wondered. "What about the reporter?"

"He mightn't be there now and it would be worse if we went later when someone would be more likely to come looking for us." Lucy told her.

"That's right." Susan said, wiping a bit of paste off her night gown. "Help me lift it."

Lucy took one side and Susan took the other, together they made their way out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house, down the lane, across the street right to Mrs. Esmara's garden.

"Here we are." Susan said, as they reached the fairy ring. "Let's ease it down carefully so it doesn't break."

Lucy nodded and slowly started bending her knees. They house slid right down into the ring. It fit perfectly, like the ring of mushrooms had been made just for the fairy house.

Lucy pulled a bit of cake out her pocket and put it in the house. It couldn't hurt to put it there. Surely they'd be forgiven now.

"Rosie!" Susan started calling her little leaf-carrying fairy. "Come on out, it's me, Susan."

She didn't come.

"Toad!" Lucy started calling for one of the gnomes. "Come see the house we've made! You'll love it!"

"Jeo!" Susan called out for another gnome. "Jeo we have cake for you."

"You're majesty?" Lucy tried calling for the queen. "Come out, please. We wish to see you."

They called out until their voices were hoarse. They climbed along the bank, and the grassy spots and the bushes, forgetting that they were still in their night-clothes. There was no answer from any of the fairies. And not a single fairy allowed itself to be found.

It's no use, Susan thought sadly. She knew the were there, she could just sense it. But they weren't answering. They were still angry.

As Lucy came close to the bush where she and Susan had seen the fairies for the first time, she heard a rustling.

It wasn't gentle or small enough to be a fairy. Perhaps it was a cat or a small dog. Lucy took a step closer. Whatever it was, was bigger than she'd thought at first. The size of a person.

"Susan?" Lucy said. "is that you?" No answer but she caught sight of the tip of a man's boot. She thought it looked like one of Edmund's boots.

"Edmund?" Lucy said, feeling a bit nervous though she wasn't sure why. "Come out, you're scaring me."

A man came out of the bushes and grabbed onto her arm. It wasn't Edmund after all. It was Roy. She'd thought it possible that he was hiding in the bushes near her house but she'd never thought he'd be waiting here.

Lucy let out a yelp and tried to pull away from him.

"Listen here." Roy growled, tightening his grip on her arm so she couldn't get away. "I'm in a fowl mood and I want the truth now. Tell me, did Colin Lee Marcus put you up to it?"

"No." Lucy said in a small voice feeling very frightened by the man's cold, almost inhuman stare.

"Don't lie to me." Roy tightened him grip so much that his nails dug into Lucy's arm.

She let out a scream from the sudden pain. It hurt terribly and she was sure it was going to leave a bruise.

"Lucy?" Susan heard the scream and came running to find her sister. Racing down the green slope she almost banged right into Roy who still wouldn't let go of Lucy's arm. Tears were streaming down her face.

"Ah, the other fairy girl graces us with her presence." Roy said mockingly.

"Let her go." Susan demanded.

"Not until I get the truth." Roy insisted.

"If you don't leave right now..." Susan tried to think of something threatening to say.

"What?" Roy pouted and pretended to look worried. "Are the fairies going to leap out and hit me? Or perhaps your brother will come back from the dead and beat me?" He laughed, thinking himself far more witty than he really was.

Susan glared at him and kicked him in the shins as hard as she could. He was so surprised that he let go of Lucy's arm.

"Run, Lucy, Run." Susan told her as they both started running as fast as their legs would take them. Lucy had shorter legs and kept falling behind. She would have grabbed on to Susan's hand so that she could keep up but she was in too much of a panic to think of that.

Much to her horror, Lucy lost sight of where her sister had run to. She stumbled over a tree root that was sticking up and right into a fairy ring she had never seen before. Susan was right, they did have another ring after all. She meant to get up and leap out of the ring right away to avoid being captured but she had fallen so suddenly and was in such shock that she forgot to do so. She saw fairies approaching.

Are they going to kidnap me? Lucy wondered feeling surprising calm for someone in her situation. But much to her surprise, the fairies were carrying something which they dropped in the ring beside her. It was a white handkerchief with the letters L.P. on it. She picked it up and examined it.

"Hey that the one I loaned to Peter the day he..." Lucy's heart stopped beating for a moment. She'd loaned it to him the day he'd gone missing.

She looked up at the fairies for an explanation but they flew away, clearly not planning on taking her with them. Were they still angry? Did they know where Peter was? How had they gotten the handkerchief?

Meanwhile, Susan was still running thinking her sister was right behind her. She banged into someone. Assuming it was Roy, she let out a scream.

"Shh. It's alright, Phyllis, it's me." A kind voice said.

Susan looked up. It was Charles Finbar. She'd known it had to be him when he'd said, "Phyllis" She wasn't sure why he'd used that name seeing as she'd already told him the her real one, then she figured out it was to reassure her that she was safe. She thought that was rather sweet of him.

"Charles?" Susan put her hand to her heart. "You scared me, I thought you were the reporter..." She started looking around for Lucy. "It's alright, Lu. You can come out, it's a friend."

Lucy didn't answer.

"Lucy?" Susan tried again. "oh, no."

"What's wrong?" Charles asked.

"My sister..." Susan explained. "I thought she was right behind me."

"Let's go find her." Charles instantly started looking around. He turned back to Susan. "Her name's Lucy, right?"

Susan nodded.

"Lucy!" He called as he wandered around the denser parts of the garden. "Lucy!"

Finally Susan spotted a little girl with blood-shot eyes carrying a white handkerchief, walking towards them.

She raced up to Lucy and threw her arms around her. "Thank goodness!"

Lucy didn't hug back, she just looked over at Charles. "Who is that?"

"Oh," Susan forgot she didn't know him. "This is Charles."

"You must be Lucy." Charles said, shaking her hand. "I'm glad we finally found you."

"What are you doing here anyway?" Susan asked him.

"Well I came to see you, Phyllis-Susan." Charles explained. "I saw the photographs in the magazine and I recognized you right away. I wanted to come and see you but I didn't know where you lived until that reporter put your address in the paper."

He eased down on a rock and the girls sat next to him, one on either side. They were pretty sure they'd lost Roy a while back in the garden and felt fairly safe.

"They're real, aren't they?" Charles asked the girls, a smile forming on his face. He looked to Lucy first who nodded. Then to Susan.

"Yes, they're as real as we are." Susan assured him.

"I knew it!" Charles beamed at them and grabbed both their hands.

Susan blushed a little (She thought maybe she was starting to really like Charles after all) at the thought of a boy holding her hand while she was still in her night-clothes.

"We really should get back." Susan said quickly, letting go of his hand.

"Yes, everyone will wonder where we were." Lucy agreed, letting go of his other hand.

"Can I come with you both just in case that reporter is still around here some place?" Charles asked.

"You would do that?" Susan asked him.

"Phyllis-Susan." He laughed, putting his hands on his hips. "Do you really think I want anything to happen to you or your sister?"

"Why does he call you Phyllis-Susan?" Lucy whispered.

"Long story." Susan whispered back.

Back home, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie didn't know their daughters had left the house but Edmund had gone into their bedroom to ask them a question only to find they weren't there. He was terrified What if Roy got them a hold of them? Why couldn't they just stay in the house where it was safe? Why? What were they thinking?

Now he saw three figures coming up to the side door. Thankfully none of them were Roy. It was Susan, Lucy, and that boy who's rich dad owned the school Susan attended.

"Thanks be to the lion!" He exclaimed, throwing opened the side room and rushing out to meet them. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, Ed, we're fine." Susan told him, as she was nearly crushed by her brother's tight hug.

"But what's going on?" He asked pulling away from her. "Why are you all dirty and in your night-clothes?"

"We were trying to do something nice for the fairies." Lucy explained simply.

Edmund rolled his eyes. "Safety first." He told them. Oh dear Aslan, he thought to himself, I'm turning into my brother.

A week later, Lucy and Marjorie went for a Sunday afternoon car ride with Mr. Preston.

Lucy was more than pleased to get away from the house that was often surrounded by reporters, none of them as wicked as Roy, but just as annoying. Susan and Edmund had gone somewhere with their parents to avoid the area too. She thought sadly that it was only a matter of time before people came with nets to Mrs. Esmara's garden and scared the fairies off for good.

"Why are we stopping?" Marjorie asked her parents.

"Oh, I just wanted to drop in here and say hello to Mr. Trent." Mr. Preston explained.

"Can we come in too?" Marjorie asked. She turned to Lucy. "You'll like him, he's a very nice man. He's the one that tested your photographs and didn't tell anyone about them."

"I suppose you could come but we're only staying for a few minutes." Mr. Preston warned them. "and you must control yourself, Marjorie, no banging into things this time."

"I wont." Marjorie promised.

"Me neither." Lucy said, even though she'd gained a matter of grace during her time as a queen in Narnia and rarely ever banged into anything now-a-days.

"Hullo." Mr. Trent came to the door. "Do come in."

They walked in and a tired-looking house keeper offered to take their coats for them. Mr. Preston shook his head.

"You've really grown, Marjorie." Mr. Trent told her. "Who's your friend here?"

"This is Lucy." She told him.

"Pleased to meet you." Lucy said politely.

Mr. Trent smiled at her. "Why don't you girls go over to the living room over there and play with the cats for a bit while I talk to your father?"

"Okay." Marjorie shrugged. "I haven't seen Blackie in a while."

Lucy went to the bathroom first because it had been a long car ride.

"So," Mr. Preston asked Mr. Trent. "How is Rupert?"

Mr. Trent sighed. "He's come down with a bad cold, possibly the flu. Nothing we can't take care of but I still worry about him. He's in the guest room resting now."

As Lucy walked out of the bathroom and passed a slightly open door way, she heard muffled moans and slight coughing. She looked both ways then tip-toed into the room. In the middle of the room on the bed, buried under the covers all the way up to their hairline, someone was shivering and crying in their sleep.

There wasn't much she could do about the moaning but she thought that perhaps the poor soul would feel a little better if she put an extra blanket over them. Lucy noticed a warm wool blanket on a rocking chair near the dark-curtained window. She picked it up and put it over the person on the bed. Whomever it was stopped shivering and their coughs and moans lessened a bit. They seemed to be in a less fitful sleep now.

Lucy had an urge to pull down the covers a little to see what the person looked like, if they were ill or disfigured. Young or old. She assumed it was a young person, probably a boy. A boy with blond hair. She wondered if he was anything like her lost brother. But before she could decide whether or not it would be rude to take just a quick peek, she heard Marjorie's voice calling her.

"Lucy, come on, we're leaving."

Lucy walked softly out of the room and made sure she was well into the hallway before calling back, "Coming."

Hours later, Rupert woke up with an extra blanket on top of him.

"Was I cold this afternoon?" He asked Mr. Trent that night at dinner.

"I don't know." Mr. Trent told him. "I wasn't with you this afternoon."

"So you didn't put an extra blanket over me?" He asked.

"Nope." Mr. Trent told him, as he started eating his potatoes. "Maybe it was the house keeper."

The house keeper passed by. "It wasn't me."

Rupert had a strong feeling that whomever the mystery person was, it was someone who cared about him. He just wished he knew exactly who it was.


	8. Trashed gardens and sword fights

Susan, Lucy, and Edmund sighed unanimously as they picked up the garbage that now covered the ground of Mrs. Esmara's garden.

People had come looking for the fairies. They'd brought nets and bird cages with them hoping to catch some. Unfortunately that wasn't all they brought, Sandwich wrappers, glas bottles, and other litter had come along with them only to be thrown on the ground and left there.

The trespassers were of all ages. Some were very little children with excited shinning eyes who'd come bringing nothing at all, hoping only to catch a harmless glimpse of a fairy or a gnome. You almost felt bad for them because they didn't see any. But most were middle aged, greedy adults who wanted money and fame. They thought that if two girls could get so famous for photographing a fairies, surely they'd get their heart's desire if they could only catch a handful of wee-folk.

Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had warned the girls to stay away from the crowd but they couldn't help themselves. They had to see if the fairies were going to be alright. What if one of their friends was caught and taken away?

"I'll never forgive myself if that happens." Susan had said as she and Lucy raced down to the garden, closely followed by Edmund who was pleading with them to stay in the house where it was safe.

Thankfully, the crowd was shooed away by an angry Mrs. Emara and the police.

Although the chief of the police was tall and wide and scary enough to get order on his own, it was probably seeing Mrs. Esmara out of bed-shaking her cane in anger-for the first time in years that frightened most of the people off.

She was rather scary looking. Her unbrushed white hair stuck out like a great puffy mop and her eyes flared wildly. She was so old that had she not been quite so angry as she was at that moment, her eyes would have been unusually deep in their sockets.

"Get off my land all of you!" She hollered in a slightly hoarse voice. "Or do I have to spank you all?" She waved her cane about to and fro to show them she wasn't kidding.

"That's it now, everyone get gone." The chief of police said calmly. "None of you belong here."

Those where weren't frightened by Mrs. Esmara but dared not disobey the police, sighed, dropped their nets and/or cages, and left the garden at once.

Out of the corner of her eye, Susan noticed Roy as one of the last people to leave. He had been standing to the side, probably waiting for the girls to come near so he could grab them out of the crowd which he was sure would be too busy to notice. He shot the chief of police a dirty look before dropping a beer can on the ground and kicking it into the water of the bank before leaving with the others.

"Pig." Muttered Susan.

"What was that?" Edmund whispered back to his sister.

"Not you, Roy." Susan explained.

"Oh." Edmund grabbed onto Lucy's hand until Roy was completely out of sight. He wasn't going to let that jerk touch his sister again.

"You three!" Mrs. Esmara pointed out a long bony index finger out at them. "This is how you repay my kindness?"

"Mrs. Esmara-" Susan tried.

"Hold your tongue, girl!" She snapped. "I want no lip from any of you. If it wasn't for you horrible children, my garden would be neat as a pin."

"You're blaming us?" Susan gasped.

"Unless it was someone else's photographs that made this place a tourist trap then yes, yes, I am!" The woman was turning beet red with anger now.

Lucy hoped she wouldn't say that they weren't allowed in the garden ever again. If she banded them, how could they keep an eye on the fairies? Or how could she ever try to find out what they had been trying to tell her?

"You are to clean up every bit of trash in my garden." The woman told them. "And you will not leave until the place is sparkling clean. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Mrs. Esmara." All three of them said at once.

"Good." She huffed. "You all should be ashamed, causing such trouble that an old lady like me has to get out of bed and come all the way down here!" And with that, she stormed off, rarely to be heard from again.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. At least they weren't banded.

And so they'd been picking up trash for hours. The worst part was that it didn't seem to be getting any cleaner. The more they picked up they more litter they found under it.

"People sicken me." Edmund growled as he picked up a sticky candy wrapper and put it in a trash bag.

"Tell me about it." Susan agreed.

"Is that Phyllis-Susan cleaning up the trash?" A friendly voice called.

Susan looked up to see Charles coming towards them.

"Su, your boyfriend is here." Edmund teased.

Susan turned red. "He's not my boyfriend."

"Sure he's not." Edmund said with a smug smile on his face, as he held the bag open for Lucy to throw a couple more beer bottles in.

"Looks like you could use some help." Charles said when he finally reached them.

"Sure does." Edmund said dryly. "Feel free to pitch in."

"Edmund!" Susan snapped.

"It's alright." Charles shrugged. "I like picking up garbage."

Susan crinkled her forehead in confusion. One thing about Charles that she found amusing was that she could never quite figure him out. He was like one of those weird puzzle thingummys that had no real answer. She liked those sort of puzzles.

"You _like_ picking up trash?" She asked, checking to see if she'd heard him right.

"Only to impress you." He smiled at her and started helping Lucy lift one of the bags that they'd filled.

Susan wondered how he could say that without blushing or at least showing some signs of embarrassment. He'd pretty much just said he liked her. Of course she'd already known that because of the efforts he made just to talk to her, but it was still some what surprising that he would just say something so blunt. In front of her siblings, no less.

"Thanks." She quickly looked away and got back to work.

 _Thanks?_ Susan thought to herself, he admits that he's trying to impress you and you say, _thanks_? What's wrong with you?

After they'd finished cleaning, Edmund and Lucy headed back to the house, leaving Charles and Susan alone.

"Charles?" Susan said as she took a seat on a tree stump.

"Yes?"

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Susan asked him. "Why are you trying so hard? I mean I did nothing but ignore you except for that one time on the train when we talked and the time when you helped me look for my sister."

"Because, Phyllis-Susan," He explained. "I like you."

"You don't really know me." Susan pointed out.

"That's why I'm trying so hard." Charles said, laughing a little. "I want to know you, I find you fascinating."

Susan was a little taken back by that. In Narnia, princes had found her fascinating because she was a beautiful queen. But this wasn't like that. Something about the way he spoke, told her that it wasn't really how she looked that cared about enough to pursue. He'd noticed she was an attractive, he wasn't blind but that wasn't the limit of his interest and Susan had to admit, she liked that almost as much as his puzzling personality.

"Can you keep a secret?" Susan asked him.

"Sure." He said.

"I think you're pretty fascinating too." Then before she he could say anything, Susan got up and went back home.

Charles just sat there for a few moments smiling to himself. He'd known she come around some day if he didn't give up.

At suppertime that night, Mr. Pevensie had an announcement for them. "I've gotten word from Colin Lee Marcus." He started.

Everyone looked up feeling rather excited. they hadn't heard from him in a while. Lucy was the most excited. She'd been fond of the writer and missed him.

"He's having a book signing at a mall opening in his home town and has invited us to attend."

"Really?" Edmund asked.

"Yes, really." Mr. Pevensie laughed. "We leave tomorrow."

"Are you sure that's such a good idea?" Mrs. Pevensie asked, looking a little anxious. "I mean, is it safe to leave now that everyone know where we live?"

"It'll be fine, Helen." Mr. Pevensie assured her. "Things have calmed down a bit."

"No they haven't." Edmund said. "Remember what happened to Mrs. Esmara's garden today?"

Mr. Pevensie sighed. "Edmund, we can't live our lives in fear."

"I guess you're right dad." Edmund sighed, moving the food on his plate around with his fork but not putting any of it into his mouth.

"Don't play with your food, Ed." Susan told him.

"Don't tell me what to do." Edmund retorted.

"Fine." Susan huffed.

"And Colin Lee Marcus has kindly agreed to let us spend a few days visiting him at his house." Mr. Pevensie added.

Lucy felt a tingle of excitement run up and down her spine. What would an author's house be like? She'd never been in one before. Would it be messy because he was too busy being creative to clean? Or would it be neat because he couldn't work in a mess? Or maybe he had a house keeper and didn't need to bother himself with that sort of thing. Also she wondered if he had a library in his house. She'd heard some writers did. She wondered if the sort of books he had were anything like the kind on Mr. Tumnus's shelf in Narnia.

Colin Lee Marcus's house was not as big as Lucy would have guessed but it was big enough to be impressive. And it did have several guest rooms. Some of the rooms were shut off (Maybe because they're not clean, Lucy had thought) but most were open wide and Colin made sure the children knew they were free to wander.

"Don't you go snooping just because he's letting you have a look around." Mrs. Pevensie had told them. "It wouldn't be seemly. Just take a quick look a room, say 'how nice' and walk away."

Susan didn't find it hard to do just that but Edmund and Lucy did. There were so many things to look at. He had some of the funniest little sculptures on his desks and Lucy even found a bunch of scrolls behind a bookshelf Edmund had bumped forward by accident.

"What are those?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know." Edmund said, holding the open scroll, feeling rather like he had during the old days in Narnia when he'd read proclamations written by The high king. It was funny how a simple thing like a scroll could make him miss his brother even more. "They're not in English."

"But what's that?" Lucy pointed to an image that did not look like a word.

"It sort of looks like..." Edmund tilted the scroll a little. "...a fairy."

"I guess that's why he keeps it." Lucy shrugged, gently fingering the old globe in the middle of the room. "Ed?"

"Yes, Lu?" He looked up at her.

"Do you think the fairies know where Peter is?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know." Edmund answered. "Why would they?"

"I just have this feeling that whatever they're trying to tell me is about Peter." Lucy explained.

"But they didn't write 'Peter' on your slate, they wrote 'Rupert'." Edmund reminded her.

"I know." Lucy took her finger tips off the globe and turned to look out the window. "That's what I don't get."

At the mall opening, Lucy, Susan, and Edmund decided to look around after the book signing was over.

"Do you think they have archery here?" Susan asked her siblings.

Edmund shook his head. "I didn't see it on the sign. But there is fencing."

"Oh." Susan wasn't interesting in that.

"That's nice." Lucy said politely.

Edmund sighed and thought about his brother. Peter loved sword fighting and would have been excited to see it after all this time away from Narnia.

Lucy noticed the sad look on her brother's face. "Why don't we go see it?"

"Really?" Edmund's face lit up. "You want to see it?"

Lucy shook her head. "No. But you do."

"Thanks, Lu." Edmund smiled at her. "Coming Su? You don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, I'll come." Susan shrugged. "I can look at other stuff later."

The sword fighting was nothing short of pathetic. None of the people fencing knew what they were doing. They were clumsy as a deer on ice skates and it was a good thing they had rubber tips at the ends of their swords because other wise they'd have all killed themselves by mistake.

"Why don't you go show them how it's done, Ed?" Susan encouraged her brother to join in.

Edmund shook his head. "No, I really shouldn't. What about my arm?"

Susan rolled her eyes. She couldn't believe he was hiding behing that excuse. "It's almost back to normal, isn't it?"

"Yes, but..." Edmund turned a little red and lowered his voice. "What if I've forgotten how to fight?"

"Don't worry about that." Susan assured him. "I heard all about your fight with Rabadash to keep him from kidnapping me. Anyone who can do what you did, doesn't forget."

"Su, I won because he backed up against the wall and got caught on a hook." Edmund reminded her.

"You're still an amazing swordsman." Susan said firmly.

"You really think so?" Edmund asked.

"Of course!"

"Oh no!" Lucy gasped suddenly.

"What happened?" Edmund looked around but didn't see anything alarming.

"I just saw, Roy." Lucy gulped. "He's followed us here."

"Are you sure it was him?" Susan asked.

Lucy pointed to a man who was watching them out of the corner of his eye pretending to look for a good fencing sword. "He's right over there."

"I can't believe he followed us all the way from London." Susan said.

"I'm scared." Lucy whimpered.

"Don't be." Edmund said, his eyes darkening with anger. "I'm going to take care of this guy once and for all."

"Oh, Edmund, don't do anything risky." Susan pleaded. "Let's just go find Mum and Dad."

Edmund didn't listen to her. "Stay here with Lucy." He ordered in a kingly voice he hadn't used in a long time.

"Well if it isn't the fairy-tale brother." Roy said mockingly. "What do you want?"

"I want you to leave my family alone." Edmund said coldly.

"Not going to happen." Roy shrugged. "But nice try."

"If you ever lay one finger on either of my sisters again, you'll regret it." Edmund warned him, reaching for the hilt of one of the swords.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Roy said.

"I saw the marks your nasty finger nails left on my baby sister's arm." He hissed. "And you're lucky my elder brother wasn't around to see those."

"You're brother's dead." Roy said meanly. "Underground in a coffin dead as a door nail, slowly decaying..."

Lucy took a step closer to Susan. She wasn't close enough to hear what Edmund and Roy were talking about but she'd never seen her brother look so angry before. He looked like he was about to explode. The hair on the back of his neck was sticking up like a cat's fur before a fight.

Edmund whipped out the sword, not worrying about the rubber tip knowing he could get around that if he had to, and pointed at Roy. "Are you certain you want to finish that sentence?"

Roy started laughing. "You've got to be kidding me."

"You're walking on thin ice." Edmund warned him.

"You really think you could fight me and win?" He laughed harder now. "Boy, I grew up taking fencing lessons. I could whip your sorry butt if I wanted to."

"I except the challenge." Edmund said without a moment's hesitation.

"What?" Clearly that was the last thing Roy had expected him to say.

"Pick up your sword and fight me." Edmund demanded. "We'll see who should be afraid."

Roy picked up his sword and aimed it at Edmund's feet. Edmund jumped over it swinging his own sword at Roy's with such speed that it almost knocked it out of his hand.

Roy tightened his grip slightly unnerved at the close call. Soon there was nothing to be heard but the clinking of their swords back and forth.

"Go Edmund!" Lucy shouted. "You can do it."

"Be careful, Ed!" Susan shouted. "And for Aslan's sake, don't actually kill him! The last thing we need is a lawsuit!"

Two seconds after Susan finished shouting, Edmund managed to disarm Roy and then trip him so that he fell to the ground. and now the rubber tip of Edmund's sword was pointed at his chest.

"Next time," Edmund hissed. "There wont be rubber stopping me from plunging this into your heart. Assuming you actually have one."

Roy gulped. He couldn't believe the boy was such a dangerous swordsman, no one had ever unarmed him that quickly before. (It had all happened in under three minutes.) This boy could kill him if he wanted to! No news story was worth that! Roy let out a whimper, got up and ran out of there. And the Pevensies never heard from him again.

Edmund heard clapping and suddenly noticed that everyone in the room had broken into an applause.

"Thank you, thank you." He bowed and then proceeded to blow air kisses to his new fans.

"You did it!" Lucy squealed, throwing her arms around her brother's waist.

"Good work." Susan told him, holding back tears. "Peter would have been so proud of you."

Edmund got misty eyed and pulled Susan into the hug he was sharing with Lucy. The three of them held onto each other tightly and didn't let go for a long time.


	9. Rupert rememebers and the fairies return

It was nearly dusk and the sun was beginning to set. All was quiet in the Pevensie home.

They'd arrived home a few days ago and since then nothing really exciting had happened. Every now and then someone might recognize Susan or Lucy and say, "Aren't you the fairy girls?" Or "I've seen you before somewhere, haven't I?" but nothing eventful or important occurred.

School was going to start up again soon. It would be Lucy's first time going to a boarding school. She couldn't help but think how much worse it was going to be now that Peter was gone.

Going to school meant moving on in life and growing up. How could she do that without her brother? True she still had Edmund and Susan and she loved them dearly. But it wasn't the same with out Peter. She still believed he was alive but was quite certain now that she was the only one who did.

Susan was sitting at the table reading some school books she'd taken out. "I want to be prepared for the term." She had explained. "Want to study with me? We could get you quite far ahead."

Lucy shook her head no. She didn't want to waste the last days of freedom studying dull subjects. There would be plenty of time for that later on.

Edmund was watching the Telly and eating popcorn. The television set had been a gift from Colin Lee Marcus. They'd tried to refuse it but he said that he felt he owed them something for inspiring him to write again. Apparently before he'd met them he'd been suffering from extreme writer's block.

"Lu, want to watch the rest of this show with me?" Edmund offered. "it's getting good."

Lucy turned him down too. The show didn't interest her. She slipped out the side door and went to Mrs. Esmara's garden. She sat down right next to the fairy ring.

The house was still there and it was still vacant. There was no sign that the fairies had visited it, never mind lived in it. The cake bits hadn't been touched either and greenish colored mold was growing on them.

Lucy wasn't sure if the fairies had rejected their gift or had left the garden before they'd had a chance to explore their new house. They certainly weren't here in the garden now. She couldn't blame them. Who'd want to stick around after what had happened?

Sighing softly to herself, Lucy stroked the roof of the fairy house. "Please come home." She whispered, tears rolling down her face. "Please, we need you. I need you." although she meant the fairies, she was thinking of someone else.

One day later, it was a very chilly evening. Rupert sat in an arm chair in Mr. Trent's living room, looking into the gently crackling fire, his fingers playing with the chain of his golden pocket watch.

Even though the glorious fire warmed him on the outside, inside he was cold as ice. He felt lonely in spite of having Mr. Trent's company. He had this feeling that someone was missing him terribly, calling him home softly. But he didn't know who that someone was or how to get to them. Sadly, he ran his fingers along his name carved into the watch. For a moment, he thought he saw in his mind's eye, old wrinkled hands handing the watch to him, but the image passed as quickly as it came.

"Don't be so glum, Rupert." Mr. Trent smiled at him. "Things will turn out alright. Your leg's getting better though you still need that crutch."

"I wish I knew who I was." Rupert said softly.

"You're Rupert." Mr. Trent told him simply.

"Yes, but Rupert who?" He sighed. "I don't know my last name or my family. By the Lion, I don't even know if I _have_ a family!"

Mr. Trent looked confused. "Why did you say, 'by the Lion'? What Lion do you mean?"

Rupert shrugged. "Not sure, but for at least two days now I've been saying that. I don't know why."

"Maybe your family worked with lions?" Mr. Trent said, trying to encourage his memory gain. "A circus boy are you?"

Rupert shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Have you had any more nightmares lately?" Mr. Trent asked him.

He shuddered and nodded. "Yesterday afternoon I dreamed I was fighting giants in a mountain plain."

"Giants?" Mr. Trent tried not to laugh.

"Yes, giants." Rupert told him. "Big scary giants. And right before I woke up, one of the ones I'd yet to kill spoke to me."

"It _spoke_ to you?" Mr. Trent wondered if he should get the poor boy to a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist would have a field day with him.

"It-or rather I should say, he, mocked me." Rupert explained. "He said, 'Some High King _you_ are!' and then he burst out laughing."

"Why did he call you 'High King'?" Mr. Trent asked.

"How should I know?" Rupert said, looking back at the fire. "It was a dream."

"Uncle!" A girlish cry echoed through the house. Mr. Trent's little nieces had come for a visit.

"Don't run!" Their mother told them to no avail because they were already running around their uncle's house serching for their uncle and Rupert.

"Rupert!" The youngest one found him first and threw her arms around him. "I missed you."

"Hey!" Mr. Trent made a pretend pout at her. "Go right to Rupert and ignore your own uncle will you?"

"Sorry uncle." She gave her uncle a big hug too. "I missed you as well."

"No, no, I understand, you just like Rupert better." Mr. Trent teased.

The middle girl (The one Rupert was the most fond of) found him next.

"Rupert!" She cried happily waving to him from across the room.

"Rupert again, is it?" Mr. Trent shook his head. "What about your old uncle who saved Rupert?"

The middle girl hugged her uncle. "Sorry Uncle."

"It's alright." He smiled at his little niece. "Where's your other sister?"

"Uncle!" the oldest girl ran in and gave her uncle a kiss on the cheek. "I've missed you so much, Uncle."

"Right now, you're my favorite." He joked.

Everyone burst out laughing at that.

"What have you got there?" Rupert asked the middle girl as soon as the laughter died down. She had something in her hands.

"Oh, this?" She showed him the magazine she was carrying. "It's pretty cool actually." She lowered her voice. "They found real fairies _and_ four of the photos in the article were tested by Uncle."

"Can I see?" Rupert asked her, feeling a sudden interest in fairies. He wasn't sure why. He wondered if he'd liked fairies before he'd lost his memory.

"Sure." the middle girl handed the magazine to him.

He opened it and started flipping through. Suddenly he turned white as a sheet and started gasping for air. "That's, that's..." He tried to say something.

"Breathe, Rupert, breathe!" The oldest girl told him. "In through the nose out through the mouth."

He took a deep breath. "That girl with the gnome, that's the girl from my dream. The one who was being chased by the wolf!"

"Oh is that all?" The oldest girl rolled her eyes. "It was only a dream. Calm down."

"But that's her." Rupert insisted.

"Are you sure?" Mr. Trent's sister asked him. "Maybe it just looks like her."

"No." Rupert snapped, starting to get very annoyed with these people. "That's her."

"Well she doesn't seem to be running from a wolf in that photograph." Mr. Trent joked.

"Stop joking around!" Rupert glared at them, showing more anger than he'd ever shone in front of them before.

"Sorry, Rupert." The three girls hung their heads.

"It's alright." He sighed. "I just get so frustrated sometimes." tears pricked his eyes and he knew he was going to start crying if he didn't change the subject.

"Don't cry." The middle girl handed him her handkerchief.

He stared very hard at her. "Who do you remind me of?"

"I don't know." She told him.

"Neither do I." Rupert said, turning the page in the magazine.

On that page was a pretty little girl surrounded by fairies. She seemed so familiar. Her bright eyes, her golden curls, her sweet childish smile. She was...

"Lucy!" Rupert called out suddenly. "My little Lucy!"

"What are you talking about?" Mr. Trent asked. "Do you know her?"

" _Know_ her?" Rupert's cry of joy sounded almost like a laugh. "She's my baby sister!"

"What?" The three girls and their mother gasped at the same time.

Mr. Trent ran to his side. "You remember this girl-your sister? What else do you remember? Think hard."

Rupert looked back into the fire. "Nothing. Just her."

"What's her last name?" Mr. Trent pressed.

Rupert thought for a moment. "Pevensie." Suddenly his face twisted out of shape and his eyes widened. "There's four of us."

"Good, good, keep going." Mr. Trent urged him to keep remembering things.

"Susan, Edmund, and Lucy." Rupert started to smile. "Those are my siblings. My Mum's name is Helen..."

"Yes?" Mr. Trent looked at him eagerly.

"And my name is..." Rupert started. "My name is..."

Everyone held their breath for a moment.

"My name is, Peter Pevensie!" Rupert cried out.

"But that's the name of the dead boy who they found under the wreckage of the train." Mr. Trent's sister protested. "He's dead. They found his body. You must be mistaken."

"No." Peter said firmly. "I remember now, I'm Peter Pevensie. What have I been doing all this time?" He tried to get up. Forgetting his crutch, he fell right back down. "I have to go home. They need me there."

"Is he mad?" Whispered Mr. Trent's sister. "What's gotten into him?"

"Rupert, slow down before you hurt yourself." Mr. Trent warned him.

"My name is not Rupert." Peter told him. "It's Peter."

"Peter then." Mr. Trent rolled his eyes. "You must calm down. We have to figure this out. Why do you have a watch that says, 'Rupert'?"

"My grandfather gave it to me." Peter shrugged, then he added, "Hey, I remember my grandfather!"

"Alright, alright." Mr. Trent tried to get him to calm down. "We're all glad you got your memory back, but that doesn't mean you can just leap up like a stag on that hurt leg of yours."

"Sorry." Peter apologized, griping the arm of his chair tightly "I just...I can't believe I didn't remember. And the fairies! I know them too!"

"Really?" The middle girl asked excitedly. "You know fairies?"

"I haven't seen them in over six years." Peter admitted. "But yes, I did know them."

"Will you tell us about them?" The youngest asked.

Peter nodded. "I will, but not right now. Right now, I can't think straight." He was starting to shake all over from excitement.

"You really need to calm down." Mr. Trent tried.

"But they think I'm..." Peter paused for a moment. "...dead."

"Well clearly you're not, they should be very pleased." Mr. Trent's sister said calmly.

Peter shook his head. "I can't believe so much time has gone by and I never thought of them. If it wasn't for Lucy I don't think I'd have ever remembered." He shuddered again.

It was around this time, that the fairies returned to Mrs. Esmara's garden. They noticed the house and decided to take a look at it. It was a fine house. A gift from their human friends. They noticed the wall paper and knew at once what it was made of.

The fairy queen waved her hand at them and flew off. Knowing, they were to follow, the rest took off behind her. They all knew where they were going.


	10. How this fairy story ended

"Susan?" Lucy whispered from her bed.

Susan rolled over to face her sister. "hmm?"

"Do you think the fairies will ever come back?" Lucy asked softly.

"Yes." Susan told her. "Somehow I know they will. Sort of like how you know that we'll get back into Narnia some day."

"Or how I know Peter's coming back?" Lucy added.

Susan let out a heavy sigh. "Lucy..."

"Don't say it." Lucy pleaded. "I know what you're going to say."

"Alright then, I wont say it." Susan gave in with another sigh.

"Do you think we'll forget about the fairies some day?" Lucy asked.

Susan smiled at her sister. "That's just it Lucy." She said. "This isn't like Narnia. We have nothing but our memories to reassure us that Narnia was more than just a dream or a game. But with the fairies, we have those photographs."

"We do, don't we?" Lucy brightened up a little at that thought.

"Yes, and if we ever...if _I_ ever start to pretend nothing ever happened, all I have do to is look at the photographs." Susan explained.

"Susan, what you said in the garden that day when we first saw the fairies..." Lucy said, propping herself up on her arm so she could be eye to eye with her sister. "About not believing in Aslan..."

"We've come such a long way since then." Susan sighed. "And no, I'm not sure I feel that way anymore. I think Aslan does care. Just like the fairies do. Only difference is we know why the fairies left us, we don't know why Aslan left us." She paused for a moment. "And you know what? I don't think we need to. At least not now."

"I think that sounds just about right." Lucy smiled. "I have such a strange feeling now."

"What sort of strange feeling?" Susan asked her.

Lucy slid down deeper into the covers and pulled them up almost to her chin. "It's like when you reach the end of a beautiful story book and you're sad because it's over and not everyone made it to the end, but you're happy at the same time because somehow it changed you and even though you don't know exactly what's changed, you don't really have to. Somehow you just don't."

"I see." Susan said. "I get the feeling too sometimes. sort of like an ending but also a beginning-yet not much of one."

"Yes, that's exactly how I feel." Lucy agreed.

"Your way of putting it was nicer." Susan laughed a little.

"Goodnight, Susan." Lucy closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

"Goodnight, Lu." Susan yawned before falling asleep herself.

Shortly after both girls had dozed off, the fairies arrived, landing on the roof of their house. They tapped at all the windows even furiously banging at some, but they were all locked and if anyone inside heard them, they though it was only the wind.

Rosie, the shy fairy whom Susan had been friends with, pointed her golden leaf at the chimney of the house. Three other fairies swooped down and flew all the way to the fireplace below. Then as they flew through the main hallway of the house, they began turning on lights and lamps. As many as they could find.

Two of them, flew right into Susan and Lucy's room and unlatched their window. It took an awful lot of pushing but they managed it in the end. Through there, all of the other fairies who had been waiting outside, got in. One fairy accidentally banged into a silver wind chime Lucy had hung up near the window.

The sudden jingle woke up Susan. (Funny how that woke her up and the fairies banging didn't, isn't it?) She sat up and looked around the room. It was teaming with fairies. Most of whom were sitting on the beams of the ceiling. The queen and her attendants were standing on Susan's desk.

Slowly, as if in a dream, Susan pulled off her bed covers, placed her feet on the ground, and moved towards the desk. The queen's little lace gown and silver crown shown brightly, the same color as the bright full moon that you could see from the window behind her.

Susan made a little bow to the queen, then stuck out her finger. The queen grabbed onto it, trusting her completely. Susan couldn't stop smiling. She gently carried the queen over to Lucy's bed and placed her on the comforter.

"Lucy." Susan began to shake her sister awake. "Wake up, there's someone here to see you."

Lucy sat up but she didn't notice the fairies sitting on the beams or the queen of the fairies who was right by her left foot. Rather she noticed a car pulling in outside. (The motor was sort of loud and the headlights were very bright) She got up and raced to the window.

Leaning out of the open window, she thought she saw someone get out of the back seat of the car. Whomever it was had a hurt leg and needed to use a crutch.

Could it that be who I hope it is? Lucy wondered, racing down the stairs as quickly as her short legs would take her, barely noticing that every light in the house was switched on.

Once she reached the front door, she unlocked it and swung it open.

Standing in front of her, leaning on his crutch, was a familiar blond haired, blue eyed boy. He smiled at her. "Hullo Lu."

"Peter!" Lucy cried, throwing her arms around his waist. She hadn't felt this happy since Aslan had come back to life and played with her and Susan. She started to sob, her tears sliding down her face and onto her brother's coat.

"Shh, it's alright, Lucy." He said kindly, tightening his grip on his little sister as much as he could without letting go of his crutch. There were tears in his eyes too. "I was a little lost before. But I'm back now."

Lucy let go of him and looked up at his face, so happy to see it again after all this time. "I knew you'd come back."

Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie sat up in their beds. Something was happening. They could tell that the hall light was on and were fairly certain they heard Lucy crying.

"What do you think is wrong?" Mrs. Pevensie asked her husband, her eyes wide and her hand on her heart.

"I don't know." He said, getting out of bed. "But I'm going to find out."

Edmund woke up too. Why are all the lights on? He wondered. He worried that Roy might be back. But did he really dare show his face after what had happened at the mall?

Suddenly a cry of pure joy rang though the whole house. "Peter's back! He's come back! He's alright! He's come back! Peter's home again!"

Susan was upstairs when she heard Lucy's cries of joy. She looked up at all the fairies.

The moonlight shone against their wings causing them to sparkle and gleam brightly as if they were glowing. They were so beautiful that she thought she could stay looking up at them for ever without growing tired of it. But she satisfied herself with one last glance.

Then she raced out of the room, down the brightly lit hallway to see her brother and welcome him home at last.

-The End-


End file.
